Vol. 12, Issue 7 (2023)

Author(s):
Sheri Vaishnav, V Ramulu, B Balaji Naik, Md. Latheef Pasha, T Ram Prakash, P Rajaiah and M Yakadri

Abstract:
Rice crop has spread across the state of Telangana producing leaps and bounds of grain every year. Growing rice in traditional paddies is the commonest practice in the state for quite long time. Since these paddies are becoming a point of discussion for their adverse impact on climate, lowering of ground water table and unsuitability of puddled soils for growing succeeding irrigated dry crops which are posing serious threat to sustainability of rice based cropping systems. With an aim to diversify rabi season rice and to encourage growing pulses and oilseed crops in order to alleviate the problem of nutritional security and to sustain the productivity and profitability of rice based cropping systems state government has taken several measures but the efforts were not fruitful for many reasons and one important reason is the unsuitability of paddies for growing succeeding I.D crops. A field experiment was conducted to study the performance of different rabi crops in different establishment systems of rice grown during kharif and with different tillage systems. The experiment was carried out for two consecutive years (2021-22 and 2022-23) at Regional Sugarcane and Rice Research Station (PJTSAU), Rudrur, Nizamabad district of Telangana. Machine transplanting, wet direct seeding and dry direct seeding were the different rice establishment methods during kharif season and each main plot of the kharif rice was divided into two sub plots viz., zero tillage and conventional tillage in which chickpea and blackgram (pulses) were grown in rabi season for two years. Among different rice establishment systems, dry direct seeding of rice followed by conventional tillage during rabi offered best conditions for establishment, growth and development of chickpea and blackgram as a result both the crops have produced maximum number of active nodules plant^-1 (14.07 and 14.03; 11.73 and 11.40) in in both the years of study (2021-22 and 2022-23, respectively).