Effect of different legumes in castor relay cropping system

In the scenario of conventional farming system, limited chances are available to cope with sustainability and productivity issues at the same time. Relay cropping may play a crucial role in tackling this concern, by increasing the sustainability with minimum tillage, continuous soil cover along with increase in land productivity. Lot of studies already reflected the benefits to crops sown after legume crop, so more emphasis was given in this study to directly relate the research towards a best choice of legumes for relay cropping in castor crop. With these thoughts this research was framed to study different legume-castor relay cropping systems viz., greengram-castor, clusterbean (veg) - castor, blackgram-castor, cowpea-castor and sole castor (control). The results revealed that greengram-castor and blackgram-castor are the best identified relay cropping system for obtaining higher castor equivalent yield and monetary returns as per the three years of experimentation. However, the study also showed that legume-castor relay cropping gives more than two folds returns than sole castor.