Integrated Crop Management Practices for Achieving Higher Productivity in Chickpea in Dharmapuri District, Tamil Nadu

Chickpea is an important cool season food legume crop grown during rabi season in black soil areas of Dharmapuri District. Its productivity is decreasing day by day due to the various biotic and abiotic factors. Particularly, the occurrences of drought stress and fusarium wilt disease incidence are the major concern in deciding the yield of chickpea. To overcome the above problems, frontline demonstration on chickpea variety JAKI 9218 with integrated crop management practices was conducted at 10 farmers’ holdings of Dharmapuri district during Rabi season of 2017-18. The results of the demonstration indicated that demonstration of integrated crop management practices along with improved variety recorded higher grain yield of 7.98 q/ha and farmers practice recorded the lower yield of 6.36 q/ha. The increase in grain yield of chickpea over farmers practice was 22.5 per cent. The extension gap of 1.62 q/ha recorded for grain yield between demonstration and farmers practice indicated that dissemination of integrated crop management practices including improved variety through demonstration is needed among the chickpea growers for achieving higher yield thereby income.