Vol. 19 No. 2
Enhancement of farm income in vegetable cultivation through introduction of plastic mulching in foothills of Eastern Himalaya
Author(s): S. SAHA, A. DAS, K. PRADHAN AND R. CHATTERJEE
Abstract: The field experiments were carried out in collaboration with different FPOs’ to investigate the effectiveness of polythene mulch on growth, yield and economic return of winter season vegetables under multi-locational trial in Cooch Behar and Alipurduar districts of West Bengal during 2020-21 and 2021-22 as one of the activities under ICAR-National Agricultural Science Fund Project entitled Development and validation of need based technology delivery model through Farmers Producers Organization for Eastern Region of India. The results revealed that changes in location have significant effect on the performance of winter season vegetables. Again, presence of polythene mulch emerged superior in terms of higher fruit number and estimated fruit yield in tomato and capsicum; head weight in sprouting broccoli and number of cloves and clove weight in garlic. The economic study showed that the highest expenditure for cultivation was observed for garlic without polythene mulch while the maximum gross returns and benefit:cost ratio were observed in capsicum followed by tomato under polythene mulch treatment. The findings suggested that adoption of polythene mulch during cultivation of winter season vegetables will increase the crop growth and yield and subsequently lead to higher economic return to the farmers from vegetable cultivation in the northern parts of West Bengal.
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