Author(s):

Sayan Sau, Sukamal Sarkar, Arindam Das, Saikat Saha and Pallab Datta

Abstract:
Today horticulture involves intensive culture of fruits, vegetables, ornamentals, herbs and other high value speciality crops but fails to optimize farmer’s benefit. Intensive horticultural systems are often based on optimising the productivity of monocultures. In those systems, crop diversity is reduced to one or very few species that are generally genetically homogeneous, the planting layout is uniform and symmetrical, external inputs are often supplied in large quantities and such systems are widely criticised today for their negative environmental impacts. Conversely, multispecies cropping systems in the same piece of land in a right sequence by optimally maintaining the space and time may often be considered as a practical application of ecological principles based on biodiversity, plant interactions and other natural regulation mechanisms thereby proves their superiority in all-round benefit of farmer as well as the environment. Methods for designing multispecies systems barely exist. Thus, this article addresses those questions, reviews concepts suitable for use in dealing with multispecies systems in horticulture based cropping systems to popularize it as an income doubling approach from same piece of land in a sustainable manner.

Pages: 619-624  |  1688 Views  627 Downloads

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