Vol. 11, Issue 10 (2022)

Author(s):
KR Shashidhar, GS Chikkanna, Noorulla Haveri, K Thulasiram and Umesha Naik

Abstract:
Sericulture has become a good source for economic upliftment of rural people in view of its fast income generating nature. In India, sericulture is a well-developed cottage industry and the technologies developed recently have made it possible to practice sericulture intensively with concomitant higher profit than from the major agricultural crops. Intercropping with tree mulberry is one of the ways by which productivity and net returns per unit area of land can be increased. The present On-farm testing study was conducted during 2017-18 & 2018-19 in two villages of Kolar district to assess the suitable intercrops under tree mulberry. Five farmers field were randomly selected to compare and study the suitable intercrops under tree mulberry based cropping system viz., tree mulberry + ragi, tree mulberry + groundnut, tree mulberry + field bean and tree mulberry as sole crop (control). The yield of intercrops along with growth parameters viz., Number of branches per plant, number of leaves per tree, Maincrop leaf yield (q/ha), intercrop yield (q/ha), cocoon yield (kg/100 dfls) were recorded. The cost of cultivation and gross returns per hectare for each treatment was computed based on the prices of inputs and outputs during the study. It was found that there was no significant difference in the growth parameters and leaf yield of mulberry raised as sole crop and tree mulberry with intercrop. Among the three intercrops, tree mulberry + field bean was the most suitable cropping system as it gave the highest return per rupee invested followed by tree mulberry + groundnut & tree mulberry + ragi intercrops.