Rice based cropping systems for west coast India

Not AvailableField experiments were conducted for five years during 2010-11 to 2014-15 to select productive and profitable rice based cropping systems for West coast region of India at ICAR-Central Coastal Agricultural Research Institute,Goa. Cropping systems . rice-cowpea, rice-groundnut, rice-brinjal and rice-sweet corn were tested for their production potential, economic feasibility, nutrient balance and energy budgeting along with rice-fallow as control. The data indicated significantly higher rice equivalent yield (23.5 t ha ) with rice-sweet corn followed by rice-brinjal (14.1 t ha ) as compared to a predominant rice-fallow system of the region (5.50 t ha ). Higher potential usable residue was also found higher with rice- sweet corn system (36.9 t ha ). Results of the energy ratio (46.5), specific energy (0.65 MJ kg ) and energy productivity (1.52 kg MJ ) indicate that the rice-sweet corn is most energy efficient system among all the evaluated systems. Although, rice-brinjal system depicted higher onfarm employment potential (217 man days ha year ) with an increase of 317% over monocropping, while the economic analysis indicted higher net return ( . 95350) and benefit-cost ratio (2.57) in rice-sweet corn system. The nutrient balance were positive for N and P, while in all the cropping systems the K balance was found negative. The rice-sweet corn system was found to be the most productive, economical and energy efficient cropping system for the West coast region of India under protective irrigated conditions.ICAR Indian Institute of Farming System Research, Modipuram, AICRP Centr