Performance of Crops in Aonla Based Agroforestry System in Bangladesh

The study was conducted at the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Agricultural University experimental farm from December 2008 to April 2011 to develop a sustainable and high productive model on multistoried agroforestry in the terrace ecosystem of Bangladesh. Experiments were carried out in ten years old aonla orchard, which was considered as upperstorey crop, while two minor fruits namely carambola and lemon were used as middlestorey crop. As lowerstoried crop variety of mungbean and cotton were matched with the suitable cropping pattern. Three mungbean varieties i.e., BU mung 2 (V1), BARI mung 5 (V2), and BARI mung 6 (V3); and three cotton varieties were tested following Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with three replications. Three different combinations were T1 = Aonla only, T2 = Aonla + Middlestoried tree species (Carambola and Lemon), and T3 = Open Field (control). The income from Aonla + Carambola-Lemon + Mungbean-Cotton combination was 239.98 % and 181.08 % higher as compared to sole aonla and sole mungbean-cotton cropping pattern in a year. Therefore, Aonla + Carambola-Lemon + Mungbean (BARI Mung 6) followed by Cotton (CB 10) would be an excellent combination.