Introduction to Agriculture and Crop Production Basics
This domain tests classification rather than memorised yield figures: you must place a crop in its season, name the cropping system correctly and choose the right unit for seed rate or plant population.
Core rules
- Agriculture is the art, science and business of producing crops and livestock; its branches include agronomy, horticulture, forestry, animal husbandry, agricultural engineering and agricultural economics.
- Kharif - sown June–July with the south-west monsoon and harvested September–October: cotton, soybean, tur, paddy, bajra, groundnut.
- Rabi - sown October–November on stored soil moisture and harvested February–March: wheat, gram, safflower, rabi jowar, mustard.
- Zaid/summer - a short February–May season under assured irrigation: moong, watermelon, cucumber, fodder maize.
- Mixed cropping means two or more crops sown together with no fixed row proportion; intercropping uses definite rows (e.g. 6 rows soybean : 2 rows tur); sequence cropping is one crop after another in the same year.
- Sound rotations alternate a cereal with a legume and a deep-rooted with a shallow-rooted crop, and never repeat the same plant family.
Worked example
A farmer in Akola sows cotton in the last week of June, harvests it in October, and immediately sows gram in November. Name the seasons and the cropping pattern, and justify it. Reasoning: June sowing with monsoon rain is kharif; November sowing on residual moisture is rabi. Two crops from the same field in one agricultural year make this double cropping, a form of sequence cropping. It is agronomically sound because gram is a legume that adds nitrogen and interrupts the cotton pest cycle.
Traps that cost marks
- Writing cotton as a rabi crop because it is harvested late.
- Calling any two crops mixed cropping even when row numbers are counted.
- Giving seed rate in g/ha when kg/ha is demanded.
- Forgetting that zaid crops need assured irrigation, not rainfall.