Complementary Agro-techniques in Wheat-Mustard Intercropping

Intercropping has been an advanced agro-technique and has been considering to be an effective and potential means of optimizing crop production per unit area and time, particularly for farmers having marginal and small holdings. Substantial increase in total production over space and time not using costly inputs but by the simple expedient of growing crops together are the unique advantage associated with intercropping through micro-climatic manipulation. Nowadays major agronomic manipulations are necessary to maximize the yield in intercropping that include, effect of fertility and water regimes, selection of compatible genotypes and plant population/ spatial arrangement relationship. Wheat + mustard intercropping is an ecologically suitable, economically viable, operationally feasible, and socially acceptable cropping system during the winter season in India. Therefore, a wheat + mustard intercropping system under adequate and balanced fertilizer management, optimum planting density along compatible cultivars of component crops can produce an additional yield of the component crop (mustard) with the least affecting the yield of main crop (wheat).