Developing Suitable Varieties For Dry Lands

Developing Suitable Varieties For Dry Lands

The varieties or hybrids suitable for dry lands should have flowing characteristics.

i) Short duration, medium height, high yielding ability.
ii) Big ear head size with bold grains.
iii) Resistant to water stress conditions.
iv) Strong penetrating root system.
v) High Harvest Indes

Eg. Grunt JL – 24, TAG – 24, Bajra – Shraddha – Safflower – Bhima
Horse gram – Sina, Man etc.

Seeding time for dryland crops:

Proper time of seeding is important in dry lands as the let growing season is likely to be shortened. For this rainfall probabilities.
Eg. Cotton, red gram, horse gram dry seeding in 24th Meteorologist week at Solapur found optimum.
For this the off season tillage to be practiced to shorten the time aces between first rain and actual seeding time. It also helps to increases moisture.
Timely seeding of Rabi crops is also important eg. Sorgurti & Safflower – Traditional practice – end of September. Improved practice – first fortnight of September. This helps in better utilize of soil moisture and nutrients.

Timely seeding for pest avoidance:

Timely seeding of Kharif crops found useful in avoiding cest incidence.
E.g. Kharif sorghum should be sown before early. July to seed shoofly incidence at seeding stage and midge fly incidence at flowering to grain formation stage.

Planting pattern and plant densities:

Under adequate soil moisture conditions change in planting pattern has no advantage. However, it is necessary while adopting intercropping systems to accommodate intercrop rows.
E.g. Kharif – Bajra + Tur in paired planting in 2: 1 row proportion (30 – 15cm.). Under limited soil moisture paired planting is useful during the season for efficient moisture paired planting is useful during Rabi season by efficient moisture use.
E.g. Rabi sorghum 30 – 30 – 60 cm. or 45 – 45 – 90 cm spacing. This is due to deeper & more root growth and convenience in inter culture operations.
Plant density – While deciding the plant density, the availability of stored soil moisture needs to be considered.
Gram – Low soil moisture – wider planting – 60cm.
high soil moisture – closer planting – 30 cm.
Sorghum – Low soil moisture – 5 – 10 plants / M2.
High soil moisture – 5 -10 plants / m2.
Safflower – Not affected by plant density
Bajra – 10 – 15 plants / m2 optimum.
Safflower – 1 to 1.25 Lakhs plants / ha optimum.
The optimum plant population leads to higher production per unit area.

Developing suitable varieties for dry lands, Seeding time for dryland crops, timely seeding for pest avoidance and Planting pattern and plant densities