Allied Agriculture

Dryland Horticulture

  • Certain crops such as ber, custard apple, amla and mango require less water and can be grown as rainfed crops. With supplemental irrigation pomegranate and mango can be used for alternate land use systems. These orchards can be intercropped upto 3 years to generate more biomass.

Ber

  • Can be grown on any type of soil. Proper manuring and irrigation during fruit development checks the dropping of berries. Regular pruning is necessary. Spacing may be kept as 6 to 9m.

Guava

  • Can be grown in all types of soil where rainfall is more than 750mm having pH ranging from 4.5 to 8.2. Regular irrigation throughout the year is necessary. Light pruning of trees assists in heavy fruiting. The usual spacing is kept as 5.5 to 6m.

Amla

  • Can be grown even on slightly alkaline soils. Plants need light irrigation till they are well established. Fruting starts at the age of 8 years. The trees should be planted at a spacing of 7.5 to 9m.

Mango

Though it is a dryland crop, it requires irrigations only in summer season from March to May at an interval of 15 to 20 days for fruit retention and maturity Mango requires slightly deep soils with good drainage and pH at 6.5 to 7.6. It needs 10m x 10m spacing in well deep soils and 9m x 9m in medium deep soils.

  • Alongwith horticultural crops, plantations for timber and fibre can be developed on soils, which are not suitable for grain crops. The trees include neem / Leucaena and agave in paired rows. Stylosanthes hamata can be grown in the interspace.
  • Silvi pastural systems: Involve lopping trees and grazing under storey grasses and bushes in forests and plantations. This system is applicable to vast areas of cultivable wateland.
  • Farm forestry systems: This system is an integration of field, forage crops and trees within a broader framework of proper resource management. Fuel and fodder forage yielding trees and planted on fences, field boundaries, bunds and near the farm ponds as shelterbelts, windbreaks and tree belts. These modify the environmental factors and increase the yield of crops besides yielding fuel, fodder and fruits. Eucalyptus, tamarind, acacia, mango, neem, casuarinas and ber are useful for this purpose.

Farming Systems Research

  • Under farming system where groundnut is a prevalent cropping system, rearing of sheep (ram lambs) for about three months @10 sheep /ha, with groundnut haulms or stall feeding of haulms + grazing has been found highly profitable than crop system alone.

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Allied Agriculture