PERFORMANCE OF WHEAT – GRASSPEA MIXED CROPPING UNDER DIFFERENT SEED RATE RATIOS

Abstract

An experiment was conducted on the performance of wheat (W) - grasspea (G) mixed cropping under different seed rate ratios (% of the recommended seed rates of W and G respectively ; W100, G100, W90 + G10, W80 + G20, W70 + G30, W60 + G40, W50 +G50, W40 + G60, W30 + G70, W20+G80, W10 + G90 and W100 + G100) at 5 the Agronomy field, Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka-1207, during the period from November 2006 to March 2007. The experiment was laid out in a randomized complete block design with 3 replications. The result showed that highest grain yield of wheat and grasspea were obtained from the respective sole crop. Among the mixed cropping treatments, wheat yield was maximum with seeding ratio of W90G10 closely followed by W80G20 but yield was slightly reduced (2%). Grasspea yield was also highest from sole crop but the yield was reduced considerably from 29 to 93% due to mixed cropping. But mixed cropping treatments gave encouraging results in terms of crop productivity, monetary and land equivalent ratio (LER). The highest LER (1.17), wheat equivalent yield (3.48 t ha -1), combined yield (3.33 t ha-1), gross return (Tk. 88620 ha-1), net return (Tk. 46270 ha-1), benefit- cost ratio (2.09) and monetary advantages (Tk. 12685.94 ha-1) were obtained from seed rate ratio of W70 + G30.