Strip intercropping system of chickpea, lentil and arugula crop as a promising option in spate irrigated area of Punjab, Pakistan

Studies were conducted to examine the effect of legumes and oilseed crop strips on inter-cropping properties and yield related parameters during the Rabi season 2017-18 at three selected locations in Mithawan Hill Torrent (spate) irrigated fields of Dera Ghazi Khan Punjab- Pakistan. The experiment was laid out in Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) having three replications. The sole strips of chickpea, arugula (locally called taramira), lentil were evaluated. Chickpea-arugula alternate strip, chickpea-lentil alternate strip, arugula-lentil alternate strip and chickpea-arugula- lentil alternate strip in combination were also investigated. Data was analyzed through ANOVA technique and differences among the treatments were tested using HSD Tukey’s test. The obtained results shows that the Land Equivalent Ratio (LER) of sole chickpea was 0.97 and LER of strip intercropping was 1.79 which shows distinct advantage of strip intercropping. Relative Crowding Coefficient (RCC) value for chickpea, arugula and lentil were 25, 9.44 and 0.1, respectively when compared with the sole strip cropping. It shows that intercropping of chickpea and arugula were effective. Chickpea and arugula strip inter crop resulted in better LER and RCC with reasonable yield of both crops under the spate irrigated conditions of Mithawan hill torrent command area Dera Ghazi Khan Punjab (Pakistan). Area time equivalent ratio could not bring significant differences among the strip inter cropping treatments. Lentil could not succeed in strip inter cropping in spate irrigated situations of Mithawan hill torrent. The obtained results recorded maximum 1000 seed weight of chickpea (144.80 g) and arugula (4.72 g); seed yield of chickpea (800.16 kg ha-1), arugula (433.14 kg ha-1), respectively when both crops were grown in the form of separate sole strip. Hence for achieving maximum yield, the farmers of spate irrigated area of Mithawan hill torrent area should sow chickpea or arugula as a sole strip.