Crop Production: Field Crops, Cereals, Pulses and Oilseeds
Field crops, cereals, pulses and oilseeds carry a large share of marks. Learn the season, seed rate, sowing time, spacing, fertilizer dose and leading varieties of the main Uttar Pradesh crops.
Seasons
- Kharif (June–October): rice, maize, jowar, bajra, arhar, moong, urad, groundnut, sesame.
- Rabi (October–March): wheat, barley, gram, lentil (masur), mustard, linseed, pea.
- Zaid (March–June): summer moong, cucurbits, fodder maize.
Crop facts
- Cereals: wheat (the leading crop of UP), rice, maize, barley, jowar and bajra.
- Pulses: gram (chana), lentil, arhar, moong and urad. Their root nodules carry Rhizobium, which fixes 20–40 kg N/ha and leaves nitrogen for the next crop.
- Oilseeds: mustard-rapeseed, groundnut, sesame (til), linseed (alsi) and sunflower - grown for edible oil and oilcake.
Worked example
Maize is sown at 60 cm × 20 cm. Area per plant = 0.60 × 0.20 = 0.12 m², so plants per hectare = 10,000 ÷ 0.12 = 83,333. At a seed rate of 20 kg/ha, 0.4 ha needs 8 kg. Note that spacing controls population, not seed rate alone: halving row spacing from 60 cm to 30 cm doubles the population to about 1,66,666 plants per hectare.
Traps that cost marks
- Writing wheat as a kharif crop.
- Quoting a seed rate without units (kg/ha, not kg/bigha).
- Calling mustard a cereal; it is an oilseed.
- Reversing jowar (sorghum) and bajra (pearl millet).
- Ignoring the legume–cereal rotation that saves nitrogen.