Effect of neem trees on yield of mustard varieties

To meet the Ever increasing demand of food, feed and fuel for burgeoning human and livestock population, agroforestry is one of the important alternative land use options. Crops and trees are the essential constituent of an agroforestry system and it is imperative to grow trees arJd crops on the same piece of land in an organized and scientific manner. Mustard is one of the important edible oil seed crop and there is ample need of its sustained production at national level. In the present study, a mustard varietal evaluation tria: was laid out with nine well established mustard varieties under neem plantation and in this present paper seed yield yield per plot has been critically discussed. These neem trees were planted in July, 1994 and yield performance of each variety in open and in under canopy condition was assessed. This study clearly reveals that when we talk of growing mustard under the tree canopy condition, variety Varuna will be obviously our choice because with this variety we are going to harvest more. One of the desired advantage with this variety was that it showed consistent performance over the years. The other varieties which showed good performance were Rajat and Kranti.