PJB-2019-731
FEASIBILITY AND PROFITABILITY OF FOUR-CROP BASED CROPPING PATTERN: MUSTARD + MUNGBEAN + TRANSPLANTED AUS + AMAN RICE IN THE NON-SALINE COASTAL ECOSYSTEM OF BANGLADESH
M.S. Islam
Abstract
Although recently Bangladesh has succeeded noteworthy progress in food security, particularly in rice production; but there is an emergent concern to feed the growing food demand for the increasing population, as agricultural land and water resources are decreasing day by day due to changing the climate. Therefore, with the inadequate land, a horizontal extension for crop production is hardly possible, but vertical expansion is quite thinkable by increasing crop productivity per unit area. However, the horizontal expansion only possible to expand the cropping area and cropping intensity in the southern coastal regions of Bangladesh, as these areas with low-cropping intensity than other regions. Considering the burning issue, the experiment was conducted in non-saline coastal ecosystem (Agro-Ecological Zone (AEZ): ‘Young Meghna Estuarine Floodplain’) (AEZ-18) of Bangladesh during 2015-16 and 2016-17 to evaluate the four-crop based improved cropping pattern with modern crop varieties i.e., Mustard (‘BARI Sarisha-14’) + Mungbean (‘BARI Mung-6’) + Transplanted (T) Aus (BRRI dhan48’) + T. Aman (‘BRRI dhan33’) cropping pattern against three-crop based farmers’ traditional non-profitable pattern i.e., ‘Mustard (Tori-7 (Local)) + Dibbling (D) Aus (China Irri (Local)) + T. Aman’ (‘BRRI dhan52’) in the non-saline coastal region of Bangladesh. After two years of observation, it was found that Mustard + Mungbean + T. Aus + T. Aman cropping pattern gave the maximum system yield and economic return than the traditional pattern. The four-crop based pattern produced the 19.4 t ha-1 of rice equivalent yield, whereas three-crop based farmers’ traditional pattern gave only 10.7 t ha-1 of rice-equivalent-yield. In the case of land use efficiency (LUP) and production efficiency (PE), the improved pattern gave 94.25% and 36.83 kg ha-1 day-1, respectively, which were superior to the traditional pattern. Gross margin of the improved pattern was 1914 US$ ha-1 whereas in the traditional pattern was 924 US$ ha-1. Marginal benefit-cost ratio of four-crop based cropping pattern was 2.38 over the three-crop based farmers’ traditional pattern. In both-pattern, apparent macro-nutrient balance, for example, K status was found negative, but N and P status were found positive. Based on productivity and economic return, the study suggests that improved cropping pattern is profitable and feasible for the non-saline coastal zone of Bangladesh as well as the adjacent coastal ecosystem in India also.
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