2025, Vol. 8, Issue 3, Part I

author(s)
Divedi Prasad, AK Verma, Vinamrata Jain, LK Ramteke and D Nishad

abstract
An investigation into the "diversification of rice-based cropping systems for optimizing yield, resource utilization, and economic benefits under irrigated conditions" was performed during the kharif, rabi, and zaid seasons of 2018-2019 and 2019-2020. This field experiment was carried out at the Research cum Instructional farm, Pt. SKS College of Agriculture and Research Station, IGKV, Surgi Rajnandgaon. The experimental soil, a sandy loam Inceptisol ("Matasi"), displayed a neutral pH, limited organic carbon, and low available nitrogen and phosphorus, with moderate available potassium. Ten varied rice-based cropping system treatments were assessed, utilizing a randomized block design with three replications: T₁: rice-rice-fallow; T₂: rice-chickpea-fallow; T₃: rice-wheat-greengram; T₄: rice-sweet corn + cowpea (1:1)-clusterbean; T₅: rice-chickpea-vegetable-sesame T₆ - rice - garlic - cowpea, T₇ - rice - coriander (leaf) - sweet potato, (T₈) Rice- pea-okra (T₉) rice- onion and coriander (leaf) (3:1)- greengram, and rice, potato, and blackgram (T₁₀). The system profitability and relative economic efficiency were significantly highest under rice - sweet corn + cowpea (1:1) - clusterbean (T₄) cropping system. The rice-potato-blackgram (T₁₀) cropping system yielded the highest system productivity and relative production efficiency, demonstrating a significant increase compared to other systems. However, when considering production efficiency alone, the rice-coriander (leaf)-sweet potato (T₇) cropping system exhibited the maximum values across the two-year study.