ABSTRACT
Crop diversification is one of the major components of diversification in agriculture. The opportunities for crop diversification emerge from technological breakthroughs, changes in demand pattern, development of irrigation, availability of marketing infrastructure and new trade arrangements. Crop diversification with oilseeds could be used as a tool for maximizing productivity, profitability leading to resource conservation. Crop diversification in rainfed regions aims to make rainfed agriculture achieving nutritional security, more employment and income generating, eco-friendly, poverty alleviation and comparative advantage in new trade regime. Groundnut, a long duration crop can be grown along with sunflower so that early season rains benefit sunflower and late rains benefit groundnut, thereby giving some as assurance to the dry land farmers. Soybean offers much scope for intercropping in sugarcane. The oilseed crops offer excellent opportunity for maximizing productivity under limited moisture availability. Intercropping of safflower with other rainfed rabi crops increases the net returns compared to that of sole cropping.
