Field Crops of Uttar Pradesh: Cereals, Pulses, Oilseeds and Cash Crops
What the exam asks
Field Crops of Uttar Pradesh tests crop seasons, prominent cereals, pulses, oilseeds and cash crops, their package practices and reasons for their place in rotations. Expect matching of crop to season and use, plus simple yield or production calculations.
Core rules
- Kharif crops are sown with monsoon rain: rice, maize, jowar, bajra, pigeonpea, moong, urd, groundnut and sesame. Rabi crops grow in winter: wheat, barley, chickpea, lentil, mustard and linseed. Zaid crops are short summer crops.
- Cereals dominate food security; pulses add protein and fix nitrogen; oilseeds provide edible oil and oilcake; cash crops such as sugarcane and potato generate income.
- Rice needs standing water or assured moisture; wheat needs cool growth and warm maturity; chickpea and lentil suit residual moisture; mustard tolerates cool, dry weather.
- Sugarcane is a long-duration, high-biomass crop; planting material is setts, and ratoon management affects economics.
- Crop choice depends on soil, water, rainfall, market and labour, not only on maximum yield.
Worked example
A farmer has 2 ha. If sugarcane yields 70 t ha−1, total cane = 2 × 70 = 140 t. If the same land grew wheat at 4 t ha−1, total wheat = 8 t. Reasoning: calculate each crop separately; do not add tonnes of cane and tonnes of wheat into one productivity figure. Compare income using price per tonne and cost of cultivation, not output mass alone.
Traps
Do not place chickpea or mustard in kharif; do not call groundnut a cereal; do not treat sugarcane as a seed-propagated annual in the same way as wheat. A high-yield crop is not automatically the most profitable. Season and water availability are hard constraints.