Abstract

A field experiment was conducted in winter season of 1985 on MUC.9 cotton at the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore to find out the best method of planting of cotton and intercrop of green gram (C3) and to find the optimum irrigation regime for scheduling of irrigation to get maximum retums. The results revealed that uniform row planting of cotton with green gram as intercrop irrigated in every furrow at IW/CPE ratio of 0.75 was the most remunerative. Irrigation at IW/CPE ratio of 0.50 and irrigated in every furrow was the optimum irrigation regime for cotton in pure and mixed stand. The yield of seed cotton and net returns were on par with that of irrigation scheduled at IW/CPE ratio of 0.75. Alternate furrow irrigation saved 35 per cent of irrigation water compared to every furrow irrigation, but resulted both in lower yields (15.5 per cent) and net returns.

Keywords: Cotton, Pure Crop, Intercrop, Irrigation