With a new move to engage farmers to grow high-yielding pulse varieties such as red gram, green gram, and black gram, the Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK), Virinjipuram has created farmlands inside their campus and raising these pulses.
As per reports, the Agriculture Institute of Tamilnadu has planned to increase the cultivable area in the district through innovation in cultivation practices.
Dinakaran, Professor and Head, Agriculture Research Station, Virinjipuram, Vellore, says that the pulses grown in the KVK farm have shown signs of increased productivity, giving confidence to farmers to cultivate them in their own farmlands.
Moreover, Krishi Vigyan Kendra and Agriculture Research Station have been providing inputs to farmers where they have followed it with slight modifications.
Under the conventional method, red gram has been raised as an intercrop in groundnut fields during the Aadi season, corresponding to the June-July period, every year, said the farmers.
As per reports, due to poor rainfall, farmers have to suffer a lot which leads to a severe drop in production over the last five years. Now, they are trying it after the first spell of rains in the Tamil month of ‘Purattasi’ (September 16-October 15), with slight modifications, which started to earn good results, the farmers said.
The red gram pulse variety which is considered to give higher production developed by the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), New Delhi, enables dense plant population or high-density planting.
What is High-Density Planting?
High-density planting is important to realize higher yield and mechanization. Traditional varieties do not allow high-density planting.
High-density planting technique is a modern method of involving the planting of crops densely, allowing small or dwarf with modified canopy for better light interception and distribution and ease of mechanized field operations. Control of pests and diseases, weeds and pruning of tree canopy can be carried out by machine. Irrigation and fertigation are automatically controlled. Such a system produces precocious cropping, high and regular yields of good quality fruits and low labor requirements to meet ever-rising production costs.
