Prospects of intercropping rabi crops in autumn planted sugarcane.

Sugarcane is a long duration crop and is suitable for intercropping with other short duration crops to maximize the farmer income from the unit area. Thus, this study was designed to find out the possibility of wheat, lentil and gram intercropping with autumn planted sugarcane crop. The study was carried out at National Agricultural Research Centre, Islamabad during 2004–05 cropping season. Sugarcane variety RB–72–454 was used as test crop and planted at 1.2 meter row distance in the first week of September, 2004. Two rows of each wheat, lentil and gram crop were seeded in the month of November in between cane rows. Sugarcane crop was harvested in the month of December, 2005. Lentil and gram were harvested in the month of April while, wheat in May. The results of the study indicted that sugarcane planted alone produced highest cane yield of 130.5 t ha1 , while sugarcane intercropped with wheat produced lowest cane yield of 105.5 t ha-1. The yields of wheat, lentil and gram were 1.18, 0.57 and 0.43 t ha-1, respectively. However, it was observed that intercropping of wheat, lentil and gram with sugarcane decreased cane yield by 19.2, 18.6 and 14.3%, respectively. The maximum economic return of Rs. 156641 ha-1 was noticed when sugarcane was planted without intercropping, whereas, intercropping of sugarcane with wheat resulted in minimum return of Rs. 138889 ha-1. Findings of the study revealed that autumn planting of sugarcane without any intercropping is more profitable than intercropping with cereal and leguminous crops.