Lequme-fish integration: Cultivation of soybean and bush bean under saturated soil condition with blue gourami.

Abstract

Benefits of an integrated culture of expensive ornamental fish species with economically important legume crops in rotation with rice could be accrued by farmers at low profit margins. Possibility of developing such an integrated system was attempted by conducting an experiment in eight paddy plots of 49 rr? each with a pond refuge of 1 n? at the centre. Two legume crops, Bush bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) and Soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr.) were used with four replicates each. Treatments were the conventional irrigation (CI) practice and saturated soil culture (SSC) where a permanent water column of 5 cm was allowed in the furrows on either side of ridges where the seeds were sown. Pond refuges were fertilized with layer litter at 1}000 kg/ha and supplementary fertilisation (layer litter) was done at 400 kg/ha/wk for three randomly selected pond refuges. Each SSC plot was stocked with sixty fingerlings of Blue gourami (Trichogaster trichopterus). Soybean seed yield from SSC plots (2458.9 kg/ha) was significantly (P<0.05) higher than that of CI plots (1263 kg/ha). Maximum fresh pod yield of beans (5239 kg/ha) was obtained from the SSC plots. Significantly (P<0.05) higher weight at harvest (4-70 g/30 days) was recorded in the plots, which received supplementary poultry manure though their survival rate was significantly (P< 0.05) lower than those raised in indoor tanks. These kinds of integrated models can be promoted in small-scale farming units.