COMPARATIVE STUDY OF MEAN WATER PRODUCTIVITY UNDER DIFFERENT FARMING SYSTEMS WITH ONE YEAR OLD GMELINA ARBOREA PLANTATION

摘要

The present study was carried out in Jawaharlal Nehru Krishi Vishwavidyalaya, Jabalpur to evaluate the mean water productivity of one year old Gmelina arbórea plants and agricultural crops viz. Sole Arhar, Cowpea+Mustard and Green gram+ Mustard underthree farming systems viz. Agro forestry (combination of trees with agricultural crops), Silviculture (sole tree planting) and Agriculture (only agricultural crops). The experiment was laid out in Completely Randomized Block Design with seven treatments(three treatments for agroforestry, one treatment for silviculture and three treatments for agriculture) and three replications. All the outputs from the farming systems were converted into Mustard Equivalent Yield (MEY) on the basis ofprevailing marketprices of the grains of agricultural crops and of the fuelwood biomass of one year old G. arboera seedings. The prevailing rate of mustard grains was Rs. 40/- per kg. Mean water productivity, which is a measure of water utilization efficiency, was foundthe highest (40.7 kg ha~(-1) cm~(-1)) in case of agroforestry, followed by a distant second agriculture farming system with mean water productivity 13.3 kg ha~(-1) cm~(-1). Silviculture (sole tree planting) finished as poor third with mean water productivity as only 1.5 kg ha~(-1) cm~(-1). The reason for this exceptionally low level of water productivity in silviculture farming system is that the output in this case is only immature woody biomass from only one year old plants wth little market value and significant water consumption for survival in the first year ofplanting.