Productivity and economics of maize cultivation after wheat crop by different sowing methods under rain fed conditions in Samba district of J&K

AbstractMaize is cultivated manually which is time consuming, labour intensive and costly. Availability of a multi crop planter with replaceable metering plate is crucial to meet the seed rate requirements and to reduce the cost involved in machinery management. Seed metering device is a heart of seed sowing machine which is evaluated for seed distance. The tractor operated multi crop planter was used for line sowing of seed and fertilizer at proper depth to achieve increased productivity The use of precise planter for seeds could save the seed in the require 15 to 20 per cent. Multi crop planter helped in efficient conduct of intercultural operation to reduce the weeds and use of other inputs. The present study was conducted with the specific objective i.e. to analyze the economic impact of multi crop planter as compared to the conventional practices on maize cultivation in the district. Twenty front line demonstrations each year were conducted during kharif season of 2019-20 and 2020-21, to evaluate for maize sowing with an objective to improve farm productivity and efficiency in Samba district of Union territory ofJammu and Kashmir. The results of the study revealed that the average yield of demonstration plots and farmers plot (check) were 31.50 q/ha and 22.70 q/ha in the year 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 respectively. On overall average basis, 38.77percent higher grain yield was recorded under demonstration plots as compared to the farmers plot. The net returns in Multi crop Planter of maize production was higher by 37.22 percent as compared to the conventional method. B:C ratio under Multi crop planter was 3.14 while under conventional method it reduced to 2.01. Therefore, Multi crop planter was economically feasible. The yield gap analysis emphasizes the need to educate the farmers for adoption of the resource conservation technologies to revert the trend of wide extension gap.