Productivity of groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.) based intercropping systems under rainfed conditions.

A field experiment was conducted for two consecutive years of 2004 and 2005 at Agricultural Research Station, Kadiri to establish an efficient groundnut based intercropping system. Groundnut sown at 30 cm spacing was intercropped with pigeonpea, castor, sorghum, pearlmillet, sunflower, sesame, greengram and soybean at 7:1, 7:1, 6:2, 6:2, 3:1, 3:1, 3:1 and 3:1 row proportions, respectively. Yield attributes of groundnut viz., number of pods per plant, hundred pod weight, hundred kernel weight, shelling percentage and sound mature kernel percentage of groundnut were found to be highest with groundnut + pigeonpea 7:1 intercropping system, which were however, comparable with groundnut+castor 7:1 system. All these attributes were lowest, when groundnut was intercropped with either pearlmillet or sorghum. Pooled mean pod yield of groundnut was the highest with groundnut+pigeonpea which was on par with groundnut+castor. The lowest pod yield of groundnut was realized with pearlmillet or sorghum as intercrops. Pooled mean pod equivalent yield, LER, ATER and SLER of the system as whole, were found to be maximum with groundnut+castor followed by groundnut+pigeonpea. Groundnut+soybean system recorded lowest groundnut pod equivalent yield and groundnut intercropped with greengram resulted in the lowest values of evaluation indices.