Evaluation of Groundnut (Arachis hypogaea) Cultivars for Destabilized Ecosystem of North Eastern Hill Region

Abstract

Performance of 27 improved groundnut cultivars were assessed for agronomic and physiological traits associated to improve the productivity in degraded acid soils under rainfed hilly ecosystem. The cultivars ICGS-76 and ICGV-86590 produced significantly (p<0.05) higher pod yield with more than 39% improvement over JL-24. The study also identified five more promising cultivars viz. ICGS-5, TKG-19 A, TG-37-A, GG-11 and GG-21 with 19-38% higher yield over the check. The low productivity of cereals in the acidic and moisture stressed Jhum degraded upland soils of rainfed hilly ecosystem of Eastern Himalayan Region is a major concern for socio-economic improvement of resource poor farmers. Adoption of these cultivars is expected to increase the productivity and net income to a tune of 93.2% without incurring any additional costs to the prevailing production system.