Four ‘Bio’ Traits Craft Pigeonpea (Cajanus Cajan (L.) Millsp) to Survive in a Dry Soil Environment under Intercropping Situation -A Review

Abstract

The climate of the rainfed tropics is complex in nature and intercropping aids in reducing the great peril of cropping under suchconditions. Dryland or rainfed crops produce low economic yield and soils are eroded with diminishing soil fertility, hence it is timelyto select an anchor crop for intercropping situations by reviewing various research publications.This work has been carried out at the Agronomy Department, Agricultural College and Research Institute, TNAU, Madurai India. Amethodical cum integrative review of past work done elsewhere, particularly in India was figured out. Nearly 200 research articles werescanned from different databases and 112 papers were utilised to write this review.This review article comprehensively documents the uniqueness of pigeon pea, being a long-duration legume having advantages likesoil fertility enhancement, multiple harvests, etc., over annual short-duration crops and how it could be called an anchor crop underintercropping systems. And hence, the inclusion of drought-resilient pigeon peas for sustaining soil health and farm productivity underintercropping systems in semi-arid alfisol would be ideal.