Exploring Castor Hybrid (YRCH 1) as an Alternate Crop in Mettur-noyyal Sub Basin of Tamil Nadu, India

Aims: The aim of this study is to introduce castor hybrid as an alternative crop in gap areas to promote agricultural diversification and enhance productivity.

Place and Duration of Study: Mettur-Noyyal confluence sub basin areas of Tamil Nadu by the Tapioca and Castor research Research station, Yethapur for the past five years (2019-2024).

Methodology: The on farm demonstrations was carried out at Salem, Namakkal and Dharmapuri district of Tamil Nadu including thirteen villages with 302 farmers holdings covering the areas of 260 ha. Looming water crisis, paucity of agricultural labourers, higher cost of cultivation owing to escalating labour costs, fluctuating in market price of the produce, the search for remunerative alternative crop to enhance the profitability without deteriorating soil productivity.

Results: The castor hybrid cultivation is gaining momentum in non-traditional area of Tamil Nadu. The advantages of castor over conventional crop are less demanding in terms of land, labour and water requirement, water deficit areas and problem soils, cost of cultivation is less with high profit, suitable for small and marginal farmers besides improving the soil health through addition of leaf litter and biological ploughing. By adopting castor hybrid as an alternative crop resulted in the highest yield of 1964 kg ha⁻¹, compared to the conventional method, which yielded 1376 kg ha⁻¹.The highest gross returns (Rs. 116287 ha-1), net return (Rs. 91827 ha-1) and BCR (3.68) were recorded in adoption of hybrid castor as alternate crop.

Conclusion: Castor is highly remunerative crop during Kharif season as compared to traditional crops because of its steady marketing price throughout the year unlike other crops. This technology increase yield up to 31.5 per cent when compared to farmer practice