Abstract

A field experiment was conducted at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, during kharif 2011 to optimize the spacing for medium maturation pigeonpea at different planting geometry and row proportions under intercropped and irrigated situation. The experiment was laid out in Randomized block Design with 3 replications. Adjacent to the treatment plots, sole pigeonpea and greengram were also raised in dummy plots with same management practices to calculate the yield advantages. The treatments comprised of planting geometry (row spacing of 90, 120, 150 and 180 cm at varied level of plant to plant spacing with 30, 45, and 60 cm) and different row proportions of pigeonpea + greengram (1:2, 1:3, 1:4 and 1:5) Pigeonpea sown with different spacing’s under sole as well as intercropped with greengram showed positive effect on various agronomic traits and yield parameters for different planting geometry. Sowing of pigeonpea at 120 x 30 cm with 1:3 row proportions recorded significantly higher LER (1.52), ATER (1.15) and IER (1.29) was recorded. The lowest light transmission ratio of 34.7% was recorded with the above said treatment.

Key words: Pigeonpea, planting geometry, light transmission ratio, land equivalent ratio, area time equivalent ratio and income equivalent ratio.