Other Major Crops And Multiple Cropping

 OTHER MAJOR CROPS

SUGARCANE

Sugarcane is that the main source of sugar and is an important cash crop. It occupies about 1.8 per cent of the entire cultivated area in the country. within the past, the world under sugarcane has been fluctuating between 2 and a couple of .7 Mha. Uttar Pradesh alone accounts for about 47 per cent of annual production in terms of raw sugar. However, the assembly per hectare is the highest in Karnataka followed by Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh .
Medium heavy soils are best fitted to sugarcane. It also can be grown on lighter and heavy soils as long as there is sufficient irrigation available in the former and drainage is good within the latter type of soils. In north India, it's cultivated largely on the loams and clay loams of the Gangetic and other alluviums. In peninsular India, it's grown on brown or reddish loams, laterites, and black cotton soils.
Sugarcane grows over a protracted period. In north India, planting of sugracane coincides with the start of warm weather and is completed well before the onset of summer. Usually, January and February are the simplest months for planting of suagrcane in Bihar, February in Uttar Pradesh, and therefore the first fortnight of March in Punjab and Haryana.
In the case of sugarcane, the upkeep of optimum soil moisture during all stages of growth is one among the essential requisites for obtaining higher yields. The crop should, therefore, be grown in areas of well-distributed rainfall with assured and adequate irrigation. the entire irrigation requirement of the crop for optimum yield varies between 200 and 300 cm. Sugarcane ripens around December and its sugar content continues to rise till about the top of March by which time it is harvested in north India.

TEA

Tea is a crucial beverage and its consumption in the world is more than that of any other beverage. India and Sri Lanka are the important tea growing countries. In India, tea is grown in Assam, West Bengal , Kerala, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu . Tea is grown over a neighborhood of about 358,000 hectares and about 470 million kilograms of the merchandise is obtained annually. The tea crop is that the most important plantation crop of India.

The tea plant, in its wild , grows into alittle or medium-sized tree. In commercial plantations, it's pruned and trained to form a multi-branched low bush. Appropriate schedule of fertiliser applications is extremely useful to produce vigorous vegetative growth of the tea crop. The tea plants are generally raised in nurseries. About one to one-and-a-half year old nursery seedlings are used for field plantation. Timely irrigation is important for the production of good quality leaves.

POTATO

Amongst vegetables, potato is grown over the most important area (for any single vegetable) in the world. within the plains of north India, potato is sown from the center of September to the beginning of January. Two successive crops are often raised on the same land. Potato needs frequent irrigation depending upon the soil and climate . Generally, six irrigations are sufficient. Salient details of a number of the main crops of India are given in Table 1. Table 2. gives details about irrigated area under principal crops in several states .

MULTIPLE CROPPING

To meet the food requirements of ever-growing population of India, the available cultivable land (about 143 Mha) should be intensively cropped. this will beN achieved by multiple cropping which increases agricultural production per unit area of farmland in a year with the available resource during a given environment. There are two sorts of multiple cropping:

Table 1. Salient details of some crops of north India (Plains)

(i) intercropping, and (ii) sequential cropping. When two or more crops are grown simultaneously on the identical field, it's termed intercropping. Crop intensification is in both time and space dimensions. There is, obviously, strong intercrop competition during this form of multiple cropping. On the opposite hand, when two or more crops are grown in sequence on the same field during a year, it's termed sequential cropping. The succeeding crop is planted after the preceding crop has been harvested. Crop intensification is merely in time dimension and there is no intercrop competition in sequential cropping.

Table 2. State-wise irrigated area under selected major crops

Choice of an appropriate cropping pattern for an area is dependent mainly on the soil characteristics and climate of the area. From the considerations of management of canal supplies, it's important to arrive at a cropping pattern which could be sustainable by the available water and also maximise economic benefits for the people of that area. For this purpose, the systems approach is extremely useful. Parameters, like self sufficiency for the area in staple food and fodder, use of a diversified pattern to scale back risks of failure, problems associated with storage and marketing particularly for perishable crops, reasonably uniform demand of water all through the year, and therefore the preferences of the local farmers are always incorporated in the analysis.