Insitu mulching technique for rainfed orchards
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More fruit yield in trees was noticed
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To meet the growing demand for food, the scope for further addition to area under agriculture and horticulture are possible only through the exploitation of drylands under wasteland environment.
Wastelands are degraded and undulated lands. And they have low water holding capacity.
Rainfall in wasteland is generally low and highly erratic and largely vulnerable to runoff and seepage losses.
Rainwater harvesting
The innovative approaches on rainwater harvesting and management could enhance agricultural production potential in rainfed wastelands.
The challenges of rainfed wasteland management mainly lie in devising strategies to integrate the efficient harvesting, conservation and utilization of scarce rainwater resources.
Application of insitu mulch helps to retain the infiltrated rainwater near the rootzone and utilize it for the crop during dry spell.
Hence a comprehensive package on rainwater harvesting and insitu moisture conservation is essential for orchard crop grown under sloppy degraded lands.
Micro catchment
An experiment was conducted at Horticultural College and Research Institute, Periyakulam to evaluate the insitu mulching technique in combination with and without micro catchment in sloppy rain fed sapota plantation.
Two micro catchment areas in the shape of a semicircular bunding and trapezoidal bunding were tested by applying raw coirwaste (composed with plurotus fungi) at the rate of one bottle per tonne for 30 days.
The composed coconut coirwaste was applied at 100 kg per tree as insitu mulch below the soil surface with a thickness of 50 cm at 30 cm depth.
The experiment revealed that even during severe prolonged drought the adaptation of the insitu moisture conservation system recorded more fruit yield in trees in trapezoidal bunding than the semi circular (or) crescent bunding.
S. Jeyaraman S. Balasubramayan & S. Natarajan
Horticultural College and Research Institute Periyakulam, Tamil Nadu
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