Field studies were conducted at Agricultural Research Station (ARS), Vizianagaram in red sandy loam soils during rabi 2017-18 with different crops viz., finger millet (variety, Sri Chaitanya), horse gram (variety, VZM-1) and sunnhemp (variety, SH-4). Cost economics was worked out to study the suitability of different rabi crops based on their profitability. In case of horse gram, effect of different dates of sowing was also studied by following the sowing window from September 2nd fortnight to November 2nd fortnight (Four dates of sowing, replicated five times) to study the yield performance in relation to weather parameters. The experimental results indicated that the benefit: cost ratio was found to be more with sunnhemp (2.42:1) followed by horse gram (1.90:1) and finger millet (1.76:1). Finger millet recorded higher net returns (Rs.28,137/ha) as compared to that of sunnhemp (Rs.24,732/ha) and horse gram (Rs.10,700/ha). Since, finger millet is a climate resilient crop; yield variability is less affected when compared to the crops like sunnhemp and horse gram. This was evidently reported in another field study conducted on performance of horse gram with different dates of sowing during rabi 2017-18 which indicated that the early sown (second fortnight of September, 2017) as well as the late sown (first fortnight of November, 2017) horse gram crop recorded lower yields (3.51 and 3.46q/ha, respectively) when compared to the yields recorded (5.65q/ha) in second fortnight of October, 2017 due to congenial soil moisture with favourable weather parameters like rainfall, relative humidity and temperatures prevailed during crop growth period in October sown horse gram crop. The early sown horse gram crop had taken long time for maturity (100 days) due to prolonged vegetative growth with the receipt of high rainfall (233.4mm) in the early stage of crop growth (September second fortnight) and the late sown horse gram crop (first fortnight of November, 2017) got subjected to soil moisture stress coupled with less relative humidity at the time of grain development (second fortnight of January, 2018) that caused forced maturity taking only 81 days crop duration. Hence, the present study revealed good profitability with the bonus crops like sunnhemp and horse gram and higher net returns with finger millet in rabi season.

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