Investigations on Competition in Sugarcane-Garlic Intercropping Systems

Increasing area under food crops is not possible due to limited availability of agricultural land owing to ever growing human population. The sole option is to enhance food production on the available land. Intercropping, if properly managed, can go in a long way to solve the problems of low productivity per unit area and sustainability of a production system. A field experiment was conducted on sugarcane and garlic based inter-cropping systems during autumn season of 2009–10 and 2010–11 at Punjab Agricultural University, Regional Research Station, Faridkot. Sugarcane was planted by conventional flat method at 90 cm row spacing and paired row trench planting (90: 30 cm). Two and three rows of garlic as an intercrop were planted in sugarcane and were compared with their sole crops. Paired row trench planting sugarcane either sole or intercropped with garlic, recorded higher cane equivalent yield and economic returns than sugarcane planted in furrows on flat beds. Inter-cropping system of two and three rows of garlic with autumn sugarcane recorded similar cane yield. However, economic returns were better than sole sugarcane crop under both the planting methods. Three rows of garlic, when intercropped in conventional flat planted sugarcane, gave 50 and 41% higher B: C than sole sugarcane during 2009–10 and 2010–11, respectively. The corresponding values for paired row trench planted sugarcane were 27 and 20%, respectively, for both the seasons. This was mainly due to higher price of garlic.