Orchard Management (1+1)

MULTISPECIES CROPPING

Multispecies cropping: It involves growing of large number of compatible crops in the same piece of land.

Advantages:

• This ensures maximum resource use efficiency.
• Helps to meet the diverse needs of the farm family such as food, fuel, timber, fodder
• Ensures continuous flow of cash, from a small farm holding.
• The biomass other than economic part is recycled within the system.
• This is ideally suited for smaller holdings and envisages maximum production per unit area and time, simultaneously ensuring sustainability.

Types of multi-species cropping systems:

i). Inter-cropping
ii). Mixed cropping
iii). Sequence/Sequential Cropping
iv). Relay cropping
v). Ratoon cropping
vi). Multi-storey cropping

i. Inter-cropping

• In plantations of fruit trees, inter-cropping is the practice of growing one or more short duration crops between inter-spaces of trees and rows, to get additional/supplementary income especially during the initial unproductive years of orchard life (Plate 7.3).

Advantages:

• It ensures efficient utilization of light and other resources.
• It reduces soil erosion.
• Suppresses weed growth.
• Helps to maintain greater land occupancy and thereby higher return on space and time.

Plate 7.3: Raj mash as inter-crop in apple orchard Courtesy: Dr Kuldeep Thakur, Assoc. Prof., UHF, Solan

Annual crops particularly legumes and high value shallow rooted vegetable crops like cabbage, cauliflower, carrot, radish, tomato, chillies, spinach, potato etc. relevant to areas are grown. In accordance with the cultivation region, some early bearing fruit crops like papaya, banana, pineapple, peach, strawberry etc., also known as fillers are grown as intercrops.

Precautions:

• The main plantation should be given priority care; otherwise serious losses may occur later as a result of
• root restriction,
• damage and infection,
• undue exhaustion of soil,
• disease infection.

Therefore, inter-crops are given secondary importance.

ii. Mixed-cropping:

• This cropping pattern is used in vegetable crops, wherein, two or more crops are grown simultaneously without a definite row pattern.
• It is generally practiced with a view to avoid risk in farming.
• It is a type of subsistence farming and ensures different needs of family.
• Mixed cropping is found in many agricultural traditions.
• In the Garhwal Himalaya of India, a practice called baranaja involves sowing 12 or more crops on the same plot, including various types of beans, grams, and millets, and harvesting them at different times.
• Growing of corianders on the side ridges of garlic field; sowing of radish over the ridges of potatoes; growing of pole beans between maize rows (Plate 7.4) are some other examples.

Plate 7.4: Intercropping of pole type bean and sweet corn for seed production

iii. Sequence/Sequential Cropping:

• It refers to growing of two or more crops in quick succession on the same piece of land in a farming year.
• Sequential cropping is also called non-overlapping cropping because there is no overlap between the two or more cropping (Fig 7.2).

Fig 7.2: Sequential cropping

iv. Relay cropping:

• Relay cropping is essentially a special version of double cropping, where the second crop is planted into the first crop before harvest, rather than waiting until after harvest as in true double-cropping.
• In this way, both crops share a portion of the growing season, increasing solar radiation and heat available to each. For examples:
• Sowing of corn seeds and French beans on the ridges of tomato field in June will give additional crop as the former is harvested in September after the end of tomato growing season in North-western hilly areas of the countries, while the crop of later sown for fresh vegetable matures in September-October.
• The rotation of corn grown for seed and soybean seems to be well suited to relay cropping because seed corn is harvested in mid-September (earlier than full-season field corn) and the remaining residue is not excessive.
• A winter annual crop, such as winter wheat, could be inserted into the seed corn-soybean rotation to use the solar energy and heat units available between corn harvest in September and soybean planting in May. However, winter wheat is not harvested until mid-July -- far after the optimum time to plant soybean.

 

Advantages

• It enables farmers to double crop their land
• Enable to produce more home-grown forage.
• It eliminates a time management bottleneck.
• It protects the environment by reducing soil erosion and impacts of manure and/or chemical fertilizer.
• It has potential to reduce nitrate leaching (wheat acts as a scavenger crop), increase carbon sequestration, and increase income for producers.

Disadvantages: Unfortunately, a relay system is not without risk.

• The soybean planting process will likely stress the wheat crop and reduce yield from what would be expected of a non-disturbed crop. Likewise, wheat harvest may stress the soybean crop. The hope is that the two crops will result in greater income (and profit) than either single crop grown without disturbance.
• Relay cropping requires a greater level of management. Wheat must be planted during the soybean and corn harvest season and planting soybean into a standing crop is a new process to most farmers. Also, pest management and control practices must account for more crops being grown in close sequence.
• The system may not allow time for herbicide carry-over levels to decline and may increase the potential for insect and disease infestations if these pests have more than one host in the crop sequence.

v. Ratoon cropping:

• A ratoon crop is the new cane which grows from the stubble left behind is harvesting (Plate 7.5).
• This enables the farmers to get three or four crops from these before they have to replant.
• The principles involved in ratoon cropping, a form of sequential copping, are different from other types of multiple cropping because of such factors as the presence of a well developed root system, earlier maturity, and the perennial nature of the plant.
• Although the term may be applied to perennial pasture plants, it is considered more appropriately used with respect to field crops such as sugar cane, sorghum, banana (Musa sapientum, M.cavendishii), cotton, kodramillet (Paspalum scrobiculatum), pineapple (Ananas comosa).

Plate 7.5. New plantlets emerging from the roots of mature banana plants

Advantages:

1. Reduced cost of production through savings in land preparation and care for the plant.
2. Reduced crop cycle: crop planted less often, so replanting cycle is longer.
3. Better use of growing season.
4. Higher yield per unit area in a given period of time.
5. Ratoon crop uses less irrigation water and fertilizer than main (original) crop because of a shorter growing period.
6. Simple and effective way to provide windbreaks for vegetable production.

Drawbacks: Ratoon cropping has a number of drawbacks, which include:

1. Later crops have lower yields than the first crop;
2. Buildup of insect pests;
3. Buildup of harmful weeds;
4. Increased disease problems;
5. Greater cost per unit produced;
6. Where heavy equipment is used, the soil may become hard resulting in poor drainage and subsequently causedepletion of soil oxygen level for roots;
7. Decrease in crop density (number of plants per unit of land).
8. Growth of volunteer seedlings inferior to sown variety.

vi. Multi-storied cropping: Multi-storied cropping is a practice, which is in use in plantation crops in tropical humid climates of India (Plate 7.6). This has been discussed in detail in chapter 5.

Plate 7.6. Agro-forestry experiments fodder grass in coconut garden