2024, Vol. 7, Special Issue 9

author(s)
Prashant Shrivastava, SR Sharma, Aashutosh Sharma, Siddarth Nayak and Yatiraj Khare

abstract
Narsinghpur district of Madhya Pradesh is a major pulse producing district of the country. The pigeon pea of Gadarwara block of the district has made a niche for itself in the pulse market in the country. Narsinghpur is centrally located in India and is one of the beneficiary districts of river Narmada. Soils of Narsinghpur district are mostly vertisols having higher clay content. Such soils are not only difficult to work with but also create conditions of deep cracks in case drought spells and waterlogging under heavy rains. There is a usual practice of flatbed sowing of pigeon pea in the district. This aggravates the situation and subsequently adversely affects the crop productivity. In view of the above issue an assessment of raised bed planting of pigeon pea variety TJT 501 was done during the year 2016-17 and 2017-18 in the Nasinghpur district under KVK programme. Results were encouraging. Average crop yield was 15.55 q/ha in case of raised bed planting higher by 5.2 q/ha over the flat bed sowing. The benefit cost ratio was 3.27 in case of raised bed planting whereas it was only 2.54 in case of flat-bed planting. Overall the ridge-furrow sowing raised bed method of sowing proved better for Pigeon pea production in the black cotton soils of the district.