Partial factor productivity and water use efficiency of ratoon pigeonpea under varied levels of irrigation, fertigation, and mulching

Abstract

The scarcity of irrigation water and nutrients poses a serious challenge to the production of pigeonpea in the changing climate. Despite largest producer of pigeonpea, India is still not meeting the domestic pulses requirement. Exploiting the ratoon ability of pigeonpea in rainy and post-rainy seasons would produce higher grains with limited resources in shorter periods due to multiple harvests. Therefore, the present study was conducted to know the resource requirement of ratoon pigeonpea, partial factor productivity (PFP), and water use efficiency (WUE). Two irrigation levels (I 1= 0.50 and I 2=0.75 Crop Pan Evaporation), three nutrient levels (F 1 = 100%, F 2 = 75%, and F 3 = 50% of recommended dose of fertilizers; 25:50:25 kg N:P2O5:K2O ha−1) and two mulching levels (M 0 = without mulching, and M 1 = with mulching) were laid out in split-split plot design at University of Agricultural Sciences, GKVK, Bengaluru. Results revealed that a combination (I 2 F 1 M 1) of a higher level of irrigation (0.75 CPE) and 100% of recommended fertilizer through fertigation with mulching produced higher dry matter accumulation (190.16 g plant−1 at harvest) and nutrients (82.08, 17.37, and 78.35 kg total N, P, and K ha−1, respectively) uptake. Whereas, higher PFP of nutrients (58.12, 29.06, and 58.12 kg grain kg−1 of N, P, and K fertilizer nutrient, respectively) and WUE (21.07 kg ha-cm−1) were observed in higher irrigation with 50% of required fertilizer and mulching (I 1 F 3 M 1) as a result of higher yield and lesser resources used. Therefore, a concurrent supply of optimum irrigation and mulching could improve the PFP and WUE of ratoon pigeonpea even under reduced fertilizer application.