Intercropping: A Sustainable Farming System

Intercropping is a ways to enhance diversity in an agricultural ecosystem. Intercropping as an example of sustainable agricultural systems following objectives such as: ecological balance, more utilization of resources, increasing the quantity and quality and reduce yield damage to pests, diseases and weeds. An attempt was made to incorporate some short duration winter vegetables of different rooting depth with fenugreek for additional return with more cropping intensity. Due to different growth habit and rooting depth the intercrops viz., carrot, cabbage and radish did not compete for vertical and horizontal resources with Fenugreek. Looking to the importance of above aspect, present investigation was taken to study the effect of intercropping on fenugreek (Trigonellafoenum graecum L.) with different short duration vegetable crops. The result revealed that intercropping of fenugreek with different short duration vegetable crops (carrot, cabbage and radish) had significant effect on equivalent yield, Land equivalent ratio, net return, B:C ratio and system productivity as compared to sole cropping system.