• Authors:
    • Naphade, S. P.
    • Chaudhari, D. J.
    • Tingre, A. S.
    • Rathod, V. J.
  • Source: Annals of Plant Physiology
  • Volume: 24
  • Issue: 1
  • Year: 2010
  • Summary: The study of cropping pattern assumes a great significance as it is one of the important path for balanced development of agriculture to meet the human requirements. The present study is based on secondary data collected from different Government publication. The data covered a period of 32 years i.e. 1970-71 to 2001-02. Simple tabular analysis was used to examined the changes in cropping pattern in Yavatmal district and to quantify the extent of diversification Herfindahl and Entropy indices have been used. The compound growth rates of area, production and yield of major crops were estimated for two sub-periods. The first period was 1970-71 to 1985-86 (period I) and second period was 1986-87 to 2001-02 (period II). The results showed that in Yavatmal district the significant positive growth rates of area was observed in Cotton 1.38 per cent in period I. Whereas area growth rates of all the pulse crop increased significantly during period II. Among all the crops highest area growth rate 43.35 per cent was observed in Soybean during period II. On the other hand production growth rates of Kh. Groundnut declined significantly during both the periods. During the study period, it is observed that cropping pattern has changed substantially in Yavatmal district During the study period, crop diversification and cropping intensity increased significantly.
  • Authors:
    • Mandal, D. K.
    • Tiwary, P.
    • Venugopalan, M. V.
    • Challa, O.
  • Source: Agropedology
  • Volume: 20
  • Issue: 1
  • Year: 2010
  • Summary: The average productivity of cotton, sorghum and soybean in Maharashtra is considerably lower than their potential. There is also a large temporal and spatial variability in their productivity due to the spatial distribution of soils and its interaction with the rainfall pattern. WOFOST model-version 7.1 was validated and used for quantification of yield gaps under different rainfall patterns for cotton, sorghum and soybean on five soil series of Maharashtra. The validation results indicate that the model performed well with RMSE less than 20% and simulated the yields with Model efficiency (ME) values 0.73, 0.88 and 0.89 for cotton, sorghum and soybean, respectively. Between soil series, the variability in the mean simulated yield among years experiencing normal rainfall was higher for cotton (CV=53.9%) than for sorghum (CV=27.6%) or soybean (CY=20.1%) as soil parameters significantly affected the cotton yields. There was significant correlation between simulated yield with soil depth (r=0.91) and extractable soil moisture (r=0.96) for cotton; but not for sorghum and soybean. It is concluded that the WOFOST model could capture the effects of spatial distribution of soil and rainfall pattern on the yields of cotton, sorghum and soybean and can compliment other techniques in suggesting alternative crop options for aberrant rainfall situations.
  • Authors:
    • Chaudhari, P. V.
    • Vaidkar, R. D.
    • Vitonde, A. K.
    • Rangacharya, D. S.
  • Source: Agriculture Update
  • Volume: 5
  • Issue: 3/4
  • Year: 2010
  • Summary: This study was conducted in Amravati and Bhatkuli Tahsils of Amravati district and five villages from each tahsil which were adopting sorghum based cropping systems. The data was collected for the year 2008-2009 from 24 cultivators for each system randomly. The ratio return over the investment at cost 'A' were 2.34, 2.58, 2.47, 2.42, 2.64 and at cost 'B', the ratio were 1.64, 1.85, 1.71, 1.68, 1.83 respectively for sole sorghum, sorghum+tur, sorghum+soybean, sorghum+cotton, sorghum+green gram. In case of sorghum+tur, the ratio at cost 'C' showed higher ( i.e. 1.95) and lower in sole sorghum (i.e.1.39). Thus, the study indicated that the sorghum+tur was found to be most profitable cropping system followed by sorghum+cotton cropping system.
  • Authors:
    • Dahatonde, S.
    • Bunde, D.
    • Katkhede, S.
    • Pohare, J.
    • Khambalkar, V.
  • Source: Journal of Agricultural Science
  • Volume: 2
  • Issue: 4
  • Year: 2010
  • Summary: The present research work has been carried out at Central Research Station farm of Dr. PDKV, Akola and at Katkheda and Sutala village of the Akola and Bulbhana district respectively. The operations considered were land preparation, sowing, intercultural, harvesting and crop residue management etc. The inputs like human power, bullock power for traditional operation were studied in entire work of the research. Similarly, for the same crops these operations were carried out by the mechanized practice for the exact quantification of the operational energy input. The study reflects the energy use patterns in mechanized and traditional farming and optimized energy efficient cropping system through mechanized farming over traditional farming. The practices evaluated for the crop production which resulted in the high yielding of crop and the crop residues. On the basis of results obtained, it was observed that the traditional operational energy requirement increases from 2680.78 MJ/ha in traditional method to 3130.72 MJ/ha in mechanized method for green gram crop. While, there is decrease in cost of operation from Rs 8407.5/ha in traditional method to Rs 5147.0/ha in mechanized system. Similar trend was observed in cotton, soybean, sorghum and wheat crop. For all the crops seed bed preparation is done by tractors in traditional as well as mechanized method except in mechanized method land smoothening is done by self propelled tiller instead of bullock drawn blade harrow. In most of the crops the farm operations were mechanized with different implements except harvesting operation, due to unavailability of appropriate machine for harvesting of crops except wheat crop. Overall it seen that the application of modern implements and machineries for the crop production over the traditional practices reduces the cost of production which surely impact on the crop production and the net income of the farmers.
  • Authors:
    • Bastiaanssen, W. G. M.
    • Cheema, M. J. M.
  • Source: Agricultural Water Management
  • Volume: 97
  • Issue: 10
  • Year: 2010
  • Summary: Water resources planning and management is fundamental for food security, environmental conservation, economic development and livelihoods. In complex basins like the Indus Basin, water is utilized by different land cover and land uses. Up to date information about these Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) classes provide essential information on the water flow path. Traditionally, landscapes are described by cover type. For water management analysis, the information on land use is vital. To this end, a classification of LULC in the Indus Basin (covering 116.2 million hectares of Pakistan, India, China and Afghanistan) has been made. Vegetation index images freely available from SPOT-Vegetation satellite were used to describe the phenological cycle of all agro-ecosystems at a spatial resolution of 1 km x 1 km. An unsupervised clustering technique was adapted to classify 27 land use classes. Ground information and expert knowledge on the growing patterns of crops was used to label the resulting LULC classes. This helped to discern specific crops and crop rotations. An error matrix was prepared using ground truthing data to evaluate the classification accuracy. Existing global, regional and local studies were also considered for validation. The results show an overall accuracy of 77%, with the producer's accuracy being 78% and user's accuracy 83%. The Kappa coefficient (0.73) shows moderate agreement between on ground and satellite derived map. This is deemed sufficient for supporting water management analysis. The availability of major crop rotation statistics and types of forests and savanna is key information for the input data in hydrological models and water accounting frameworks. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
  • Authors:
    • Verma, R. P. S.
    • Sharma, R. K.
  • Source: Cereal Research Communications
  • Volume: 38
  • Issue: 3
  • Year: 2010
  • Summary: A study was undertaken at the Directorate of Wheat Research experimental station, Karnal, India, to evaluate the effect of nitrogen (30, 60 and 90 kg/ha) and irrigation (one, two and three) on yield and grain quality traits of two and six row type malt barley genotypes. The mean grain yield significantly increased from 41.9 to 45.8 q/ha with increase in nitrogen dose from 30 to 90 kg/ha and 41.8 to 45.9 q/ha with increase in irrigations from one to three. The two and six row barleys had almost similar yield potential at higher nitrogen application and irrigation frequency but the six-row type had advantage at lower nitrogen and irrigation. Varietal effects were significant for all the traits, while N significantly affected only grain yield, spikes per unit area, 1000-grain weight and husk content. Irrigation effects were significant for bulk density, grain yield, spikes per unit area, and grains per spike. Traits like grain bulk density, proportion of bold and thin grains and husk content are mainly affected by variety and less affected by management practices.
  • Authors:
    • Singh, B. K.
    • Singh, D. K.
    • Yadav, V. P. S.
    • Singh, L.
  • Source: Indian Research Journal of Extension Education
  • Volume: 10
  • Issue: 3
  • Year: 2010
  • Summary: The cultivation of vegetables, which is done mainly for economic gain or for marketing purpose, is known as Commercial Vegetable Cultivation. India is one of the largest producer of raw materials for the food processing industries in the world (only 2%). The value addition in food sector is as low as 7 percent and will go up to 35 percent. There is need for increasing food processing from 2 percent to 10 percent by 2010 which will be reflected, in the corresponding increase in Gross National Product. Vegetable cultivation has great potentiality and scope for improving socio-economic condition of small and marginal farmers since it provides higher yield and high economic return in short time as compared to food grains. It is an indispensable part of balanced diet and according to Indian Council of Medical Research recommendation; average person should consume nearly 300 g of vegetable daily. Growing of vegetables is 4 to 8 times more remunerative than cereals and it also generate employment in the rural areas. Commercial vegetable cultivation is not getting as popular as it should be among growers because of high input costs, lack of irrigation facilities and difficulties in their marketing and storage. It is estimated that by 2010 country's vegetable demand would be around 135 million tonnes. There is an urgent need to increase the productivity of vegetable in order to provide nutritional security to increasing population of India. Uttar Pradesh is second largest producer state of vegetable. Due to its proximity to National Capital Territory of Delhi, Ghaziabad has a great potential for commercial vegetable cultivation. Hence, the study was carried out in eight blocks of this district. In this study adoption level refers to the level of adoption of recommended cultivation practices of cabbage by the respondents. Fifteen recommended practices included in the package of practices in vegetable cultivation were used for measuring this adoption. The findings of this study highlighted that about 85 percent of the vegetable growers had low or medium adoption of commercial cabbage cultivation practices meaning there by medium adopters were more energetic, knowledgeable, dynamic and having more interest in adopting modern vegetable technologies.
  • Authors:
    • Buttar, G. S.
    • Thind, H. S.
    • Aujla, M. S.
  • Source: Irrigation Science
  • Volume: 28
  • Issue: 6
  • Year: 2010
  • Summary: A 4-year field experiment was conducted in a semi-arid area to evaluate the response of each furrow and alternate furrow irrigation in wheat-cotton system using irrigation waters of different qualities in a calcareous soil. Irrigation was applied to each and alternate furrow of bed-planted wheat followed by ridge-planted cotton for comparison with standard check-basin method of irrigation to both the crops. These methods of irrigation were evaluated under three water qualities namely good quality canal water (CW), poor quality tube well water (TW) and pre-sowing irrigation to each crop with CW and all subsequent irrigations with TW (CWpsi+TW). The pooled results over 4 years revealed that wheat grain yield was not affected significantly with quality of irrigation water, but significant yield reduction was observed in alternate bed irrigation under canal water and tube well water irrigations. In cotton, poor quality tube well water significantly reduced the seed cotton yield in all the three methods of planting. The pre-sowing irrigation with canal water and all subsequent irrigations with tube well water improved the seed cotton yield when compared with tube well water alone. However, this yield increase was significant only in alternate furrow irrigation, and the yield obtained was on a par with yield under alternate furrow in CW. When compared to check-basin irrigation, each furrow and alternate furrow irrigation resulted in a saving of 30 and 49% of irrigation water in bed-planted wheat, whereas the corresponding savings in ridge-planted cotton were 20 and 42%, respectively. Reduced use of irrigation water under alternate furrow, without any significant reduction in yield, resulted in 28.1, 23.9 and 43.2% higher water use efficiency in wheat under CW, TW and CWpsi+TW, respectively. The corresponding increase under cotton was 8.2, 2.1 and 19.5%. The implementation of alternate furrow irrigation improved the water use efficiency without any loss in yield, thus reduced use of irrigation water especially under poor quality irrigation water with pre-sowing irrigation with canal water reduced the deteriorating effects on yield and soil under these calcareous soils.
  • Authors:
    • Reddy, P. R. R.
    • Veeranna, G.
    • Rao, L. J.
  • Source: Journal of Research ANGRAU
  • Volume: 38
  • Issue: 3/4
  • Year: 2010
  • Summary: Maize ( Zea mays) is one of the important cereal crops cultivated in India. Its area is expanding fast in Andhra Pradesh. Plant density in corn, varies with soil, rainfall, hybrid, planting pattern and field preparation (Olson and Sander, 1988). Of late, Zero tillage maize, after kharif rice is gaining popularity among the farming community in Andhra Pradesh. In zero tillage, after harvesting kharif rice, maize seeds will be dibbled under optimum moisture condition without any field preparation. Pre emergence spraying of atrazine in combination with paraquat or glyphosate is practiced to control weeds. Fertilizer application starts from 15 days after sowing in various quantities. In general, intercultivation is not practiced. The crop receives 4-6 irrigations depending on soil type.
  • Authors:
    • Thenua, O. V. S.
    • Sharma, U. C.
    • Abraham, T.
    • Shivakumar, B. G.
  • Source: The Indian Journal of Agricultural Sciences
  • Volume: 80
  • Issue: 5
  • Year: 2010
  • Summary: A field experiment was conducted during winter ( rabi) season of 2005-06 and 2006-07 in the Agronomy Research Farm of Amar Singh College, Lakhaoti, Uttar Pradesh to study the effect of levels of irrigation and fertility on chickpea ( Cicer arietinum L.) and mustard ( Brassica juncea L. czernj & coss.) in sole and intercropping systems. The experiment was conducted in split-plot design with 3 replications. The combination of treatments consisted of 3 cropping systems, namely sole mustard (C 1), sole chickpea (C 2) and chickpea+mustard intercropping (C 3) (4:1 raw ratio) and 4 irrigation levels [no irrigation (I 0), irrigation at pre-flowering (I 1), at pod formation (I 2) at both pre-flowering and pod formation (I 3)] for chickpea allotted to main plots and 3 fertility levels [F 1 (20:40:10 kg N, P 2O 5 and S/ha) F 2 (40:60:20 kg N, P 2O 5 and S/ha) and F 3 recommended dose of fertilisers (RDF)] for both the crops on row length basis to sub-plots. The sole Indian mustard recorded higher seed yield compared to intercropping. The yield reduction in mustard was to the tune of 58.9% and 60.0% in the first and second year, respectively, due to intercropping chickpea. Irrigation, on an average increased the mustard yield by 6.47% (I 1), 12.18% (I 2) and 13.18% (I 3) compared to no irrigation (I 0). Similarly fertilizer treatments F 2 and F 3 on an average increased mustard yield by 10.17% and 18.46%, respectively, over the F 1. The intercropping of chickpea and mustard in 4:1 raw ratio was significantly superior to sole crops of either chickpea or mustard in terms of yield and economics. Between the sole crops, chickpea was better as compared to mustard. Application of recommended dose of fertilizers (20:60:20 kg, N, P 2O 5 and S/ha) on area basis was superior.