Horticulture and Vegetable Production
Horticulture and Vegetable Production
This domain covers fruit, vegetable and flower production: propagation, nursery management, planting geometry, training and pruning, maturity and post-harvest handling. Rajasthan examples include ber, aonla, pomegranate, guava, tomato, onion, chilli and okra.
Core rules and concepts
- Horticulture branches include pomology (fruits), olericulture (vegetables) and floriculture (flowers).
- Sexual propagation uses seed; asexual propagation uses cuttings, layering, budding and grafting. Grafting joins a scion to a rootstock chosen for vigour, disease resistance or soil adaptation.
- Nursery management requires healthy seed, raised beds, drainage, partial shade and hardening before transplanting.
- Training shapes the plant framework; pruning removes unwanted growth and improves light penetration and fruit quality.
- Maturity indices include colour, firmness, soluble solids, size and days after sowing. Careful harvesting and cool storage reduce losses.
Worked example
Tomato is planted at 60 cm × 45 cm. Area per plant = 0.60 × 0.45 = 0.27 m², so plants/ha = 10,000 ÷ 0.27 = 37,037. Add 10% for nursery losses = 40,741 seedlings. With 85% germination, seed required = 40,741 ÷ 0.85 = 47,930 seeds. At 3 g per 1,000 seeds, seed rate = 47,930 × 3 ÷ 1,000 = about 144 g/ha. Reason: spacing gives plant population, then nursery failure and germination increase the seed requirement.
Traps that cost marks
Confusing plant population with seed rate; forgetting to add nursery mortality; reversing rootstock and scion; calling tomato a vegetable in botanical classification; using one maturity index for all crops.