Book of Extended summaries ISDA

International Conference on Reimagining Rainfed Agro-ecosystems: Challenges &
Opportunities during 22-24, December 2022 at ICAR-CRIDA, Hyderabad
high levels of instability and uncertainty. Being in the rain-shadow region of Andhra Pradesh,
the district is drought-prone. Groundnut is the main crop with 7.5 lakh ha which is purely
rainfed. During the recent years, the yields of groundnut crop has been reduced drastically or
sometimes the crop fails due to severe drought. Hence, there is a need to introduce profitable
and sustainable crops. Crop diversification can be practiced in dryland areas to reduce the risk
factor of crop failures due to recurring droughts (Khanam et al. 2018). Castor can be grown as
an alternative to groundnut. Being hardy crop, it can be grown under rainfed conditions and
thrives well on a variety of soils and climatic conditions (Reddy and Suresh, 2008). It was
therefore, felt worthwhile to adopt the castor as an alternate crop was carried out in the farmers’
fields under National Innovations on Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA) project. Crop
diversification in a participatory mode was demonstrated in the NICRA TDC adopted villages
Peravali, Chamaluru and Chakrayapeta villages.
Methodology
NICRA adopted villages Chamaluru, Peravali and Chakrayapeta falls under Narpala and
Singanamala mandals of Ananthapuramu district respectively. The normal rainfall of the area
566.2 mm. The total cultivated area of Chamaluru, Peravali and Chakrayapeta is 2162 ha, 714
ha and 104 ha, respectively. The major soil types are red soils (90%) and light black soils
(10%). The major rainfed crops cultivated during Kharif are groundnut, redgram and jowar.
The actual crop seasonal rainfall was 200 mm in 2018, 398 mm in 2019, 748 mm in 2020 and
647 mm in 2021.
The treatment comprised of short duration castor hybrids (DCH-519 & ICH-66) and farmers
practice is groundnut (K-6). The demonstration was conducted in 20.5 ha involving 34 farmers
from the adopted villages. Crop yield (kg/ha) and economics were recorded. All the costs were
determined considering the prevailing charges of agricultural operations and the market price
of the involved inputs. During studies, gross returns were obtained by translating the harvest
into monetary terms at the prevalent market rate.
Results
A comparison of yield performance between castor and farmer’s practice (groundnut) is
depicted in Table 1. It was observed that, during 2021-22, castor resulted higher pod yield
(1150 kg/ha) as compared to groundnut plot (670 kg/ha) with 71.6 per cent yield increase over
the groundnut. Similar results were obtained in 2018 to 2021 with castor. The castor plots
recorded higher mean pod yield (817 kg/ha) as compared to groundnut (485 kg/ha) with 66 per
cent average increase in yield over the farmer’s practice.
The economics of castor production under crop diversification was presented in Table 2.
During the four-year period higher average gross return was recorded with demonstration plots
(29266 Rs/ha) as compared to groundnut (27711 Rs/ha). During 2021-22, improved technology
Institutional and policy innovations for accelerated and enhanced impacts
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