Diversification of Sugarcane-Based Cropping System with Medicinal and Aromatic Plants

Sugarcane is one of the most important cash crops in the world. The crop has the potential to perform comparatively better under adverse climatic conditions. Employment opportunities, livelihood security, and environmental concerns are the main focus of interest amidst changing climatic scenarios with increasing population pressure and deteriorating natural resources. Hence, it becomes essential to achieve the target of sustainable development goals (SDGs). Meeting food energy demand and supply gaps without interrupting environmental sustainability is the key challenge to scientists, policymakers, and environmental planners worldwide. The farming community is highly sensitive to climatic abnormality that is highly impacted by resource scarcity such as depletion of water resources and land degradation. This situation may further worsen for sustainability in the future. In recent years, consequences of both intensive agricultural practices and anthropogenic activities have deteriorated the natural agroecosystem substantially. At present, modern agriculture has targeted the adoption of advanced technological interventions that can serve as more efficient for resource utilization besides time-saving production-enhancing processes and practices. Multiple cropping has been practiced in many parts of the world as a way to maximize land productivity and resource use efficiency. Sugarcane is a long-duration crop and takes about 90–120 days for canopy development, which allows for growing intercrops during the early stage, especially in autumn planted crops. The main purpose of sugarcane cultivation is to generate more farm income to meet the basic financial requirements of a growing community. High-value crops, especially medicinal and aromatic plants, are known as industrial crops having tremendous scope to generate farm income. The length of the growing period of selected high-value crops is not more than 6 months, and few of them like Tulsi and marigold have crop duration of just 60–70 days, which may be easily adjusted in a sugarcane-based cropping system. There is a great need to develop a system approach by diversifying the proportion of existing cropping systems of sugarcane through commercial crops in system mode to provide employment opportunities throughout the year and generate higher income at each level of the farming community. Hence, this book chapter will include the concept, merit, and demit of crop diversification, agronomy of various component crops under diversification, and identification of the best cropping system for higher sugarcane yield, energy efficiency, environmental friendliness, and more profitable through diversification of existing cropping system with high-value crops.