Crop Production

Question 1 What do we get from cereals, pulses, fruits and oil seed crops?

Question 2  On what factors does successful crop production depends?

Question 3 Why is it necessary to increase production of both, plants and animals?

Question 4 Name 2 crop season in northern India? Give example of each?

Food is required for growth, development and body repair. It also protects the body from diseases and provide energy for doing all life functions.

For example: food supplies proteins, carbohydrates, fats (lipids) and vitamins, minerals and water to our body.

Autotrophs

Only green plants are autotrophs, i.e., they make their own food. Green plants perform a basic metabolic activity, called by photosynthesis, in which by using the energy of sunlight green plants combine carbon dioxide (CO₂) and water (H₂O) to produce carbohydrates (food).

Heterotrophs

Animals and human beings are heterotrophs, i.e., they depend on plants and other animals for food.

It is necessary to increase production of both, plants and animals to meet the demand of population. Our scientists put efforts to increase food production. This resulted in a variety of ‘revolutions’ which made India self-reliant. These revolutions include green revolution (bumper production of food grains), blue revolution (enhanced fish production), white revolution (increased milk production) and yellow revolution (increased oil production).

For ever increasing human population of our country the natural resources such as land, soil, water, fossil fuels, etc., are being overexploited for food, shelter and urbanisation.All these human activities have degraded our environment and caused following problems: soil erosion, salinization of soils, desertification, silting of rivers, floods, droughts, eutrophication, ozone depletion, deforestation, wild life extinction, pollution of air, water and land, biomagnification of toxic substances.

It has become far more important that we should increase food production without degrading our environment and disturbing the natural balance. Currently, there is a need of adoption of technique of sustainable agriculture, which can be defined as the successful management of resources for agriculture to satisfy the changing human needs, while maintaining or enhancing the quality of environment and conserving natural resources.

Crop Production 

Crops are plants grown on larger area for food or other use. Agriculture is an applied science which deals with the mass production of plants and animals useful to human beings, involving soil cultivation and breeding and management of crops and livestocks (domestic animals).

Successful crop production depends upon

a) understanding of how crops develop and grow

b) how various factors affect the growth and development of crops.

c) how each factor can be modified or managed.

Cereal crops such as wheat, rice, maize, barley, minor millets (bajra) and sorghum (jowar) provide us carbohydrate for energy requirement, pulse crops such as chicken pea or gram (chana), pea (matar), black gram (urad), green gram (moong), pigeon pea (arhar), lentil (masoor) and cow pea (lobia) provide us protein , oil seed crops such as soyabean, ground nut, sesame, castor, mustard, linseed, niger and sunflower provide us fatty acids. Crops of vegetables, spices and fruits provide us a range of vitamins, minerals along with small quantities of protein, carbohydrate and oil.

Crop Seasons

Various crops require different climatic conditions, temperature and photoperiod, for their growth and completing their life cycle.

In northern India, there are following two distinct season crops:

1) Kharif season crops: These crops are grown in rainy seasons, i.e. kharif season from the month of June to October.

For example: paddy, soyabean, arhar, maize, millet, cotton, urad and moong are kharif season crops

2) Rabi season crops: These crops are grown in winter season, i.e. rabi season from November to April.

For example: wheat, gram, peas, mustard, linseed, sugarcane are rabi season crops.