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niques will be tested for reliability of results.<br />
Preliminary work is in progress on development<br />
of precise screening for salinity tolerance.<br />
R a t o o n i n g<br />
Last year we reported increased production by<br />
ratooning. Pigeonpeas are normally harvested<br />
when the pods mature. However, if the plants are<br />
left in the field they go on to produce a second<br />
flush of flowers and a second crop of pods. This<br />
second crop is produced during the hot dry<br />
season when the fields cannot be used for other<br />
crops; the well-established deep root system of<br />
the pigeonpeas is able to exploit water which is<br />
still available in the soil.<br />
The first crop of pods can be harvested by<br />
cutting off the pod-bearing branches; the<br />
ratooned plants then go on to produce a second<br />
crop. The ability of cultivars to produce a good<br />
second crop after ratooning differs considerably,<br />
but some are able to produce almost as much in<br />
the second crop as they did in the first.<br />
We have investigated the effects of different<br />
ratooning treatments, at the time of the first<br />
harvest, on second-harvest yields. When the<br />
plants were ratooned progressively lower down,<br />
closer to the ground, there was more regenerative<br />
vegetative growth before they again began<br />
flowering. Plants which were not ratooned at all,<br />
from which the first crop of pods had been<br />
plucked by hand, were first to begin flowering<br />
again and they produced a second crop of pods<br />
sooner than any of the ratooned plants. These<br />
nonratooned plants produced the highest<br />
second-harvest yields. The lowest yields came<br />
from plants which were ratooned closest to the<br />
ground.<br />
These results clearly showed that the best<br />
treatment of all was nonratooning, pfobably<br />
because the second crop of pods was produced<br />
with the minimum delay at a time when water<br />
stress was becoming progressively greater. The<br />
yields obtained were quite considerable. For<br />
example, in an experiment on a deep Alfisol cv<br />
148 and AS-71-37 produced a mean secondharvest<br />
yield of 1 000 kg/ha without ratooning,<br />
Table 30. Atylosia species available at ICRISAT<br />
Center.<br />
Species<br />
Entries<br />
A. scarabaeoides 12<br />
A. sericea 3<br />
A. lineata 3<br />
A. platycarpa 1<br />
A. volubilis 2<br />
A. trinervia 1<br />
A. grandifolia 1<br />
A. albicans 3<br />
A. cajanifolia 1<br />
A. rugosa 1<br />
Figure 27. Plants of Atylosia cajanifolia, apparently<br />
the closest wild relative of<br />
pigeonpea, collected in Bailadila Hills<br />
of Madhya Pradesh, India.<br />
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