Agronomy, Crop Husbandry and Watershed Management
What is tested
Crop seasons, tillage and seedbed preparation, seed rate and spacing, nursery and transplanting, nutrient and water management, integrated pest management, cropping systems, and watershed treatment planning from ridge to valley.
Core rules
- Seasons in Odisha: Kharif (June–October, rice, maize, groundnut, pulses), Rabi (October–March, wheat, mustard, gram, potato) and Zaid/summer (short-duration vegetables, green gram, sesame).
- Cropping systems: rice–rice, rice–groundnut, rice–pulse and rice–vegetable are common; a legume in the rotation restores nitrogen and breaks pest cycles.
- Integrated Nutrient Management: soil-test based NPK plus farmyard manure or green manure plus biofertilisers. Urea is 46% N, DAP 18% N and 46% P2O5, MOP 60% K2O, SSP about 16% P2O5.
- Integrated Pest Management: monitoring, economic threshold level, resistant varieties, biological control, and pesticide as the last resort.
- Watershed approach: treat from ridge to valley - contour trenches and afforestation on the ridge, bunding and waterways on the cultivated middle, check dams and nala bunds in the valley, with a farm pond for harvesting runoff.
Worked example
How many rice seedlings are needed for 1 hectare at 20 cm × 15 cm spacing with 2 seedlings per hill? Area per hill = 0.20 m × 0.15 m = 0.03 m². Number of hills per hectare = 10,000 m² ÷ 0.03 m² ≈ 333,333. With 2 seedlings per hill that is about 666,666 seedlings, roughly 6.7 lakh. Reason step by step: convert spacing to area, divide into the hectare, then multiply by seedlings per hill - never estimate directly.
Marks-losing traps
- Reversing the order of watershed treatment (starting at the valley instead of the ridge).
- Quoting urea as 46% P2O5 - urea carries nitrogen only.
- Confusing seed rate with plant population; spacing determines population, seed rate must then be raised for germination losses.