🌵 Dry Land Agriculture

Dry land definantion, classification, crop management, institutions, draught in agriculture.

Dryland Agriculture

Dryland Agriculture refers to growing of crops entirely under rainfed conditions.
Therefore rainfall is the main factor which will decide the time of sowing in Dryland condition.
Area under Dryland agriculture in India is about 52 per cent.
About 75-90 per cent water is lost through evaporation under Dryland situation.
Shallow tillage in red soils in Drylands improves moisture conservation.

Crops grown

Pulses and oilseeds, important commercial crops like cotton, castor, groundnut and all coarse grains like jowar, bajra etc.

Comparison study of Dry farming, Dryland farming and Rainfed farming

Given below is the crop regions in India that are classified on the basis of average rainfall:

All India Coordinated Research Project (AICRP) for Dryland Agriculture

In order to deal with the above mentioned aberrant weather conditions which are a problem for farming in such areas, Indian council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) started All India Coordinated Research Project for Dryland Agriculture (AICRPDA) in 1970 with the assistance from the Government of Canada.
The project presently has 25 co-operative centres.
The establishment of Central Research Institute for dryland Agriculture (CRIDA) at Hyderabad in 1985 gave an impetus by providing basic and strategic research support.

The following is the mandate of the mission:

Optimize the use of natural resources, i.e., rainfall, land and water, and minimize soil and water loss and degradation of environment.
Evolve simple technologies to substantially increase crop productivity and profitability.
Increase stability of crop production over years by providing improvements in natural resources management, crop management systems and alternate crop production technologies matching weather aberrations.
Develop alternate and sustainable land use systems.
Evaluate and study transferability of improved dryland technologies to farmers fields.

CRIDA

Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture (CRIDA) is a National Research Institute under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) established in 1985 with a mandate to carry out basic and applied research in rainfed farming.
The Institute also undertakes National / International Collaborations and Consultancy Projects.
All India Coordinated Research Programmes (AICRPs) of ICAR on Dryland Agriculture and Agrometeorology with 25 partners each are in CRIDA.
This is the lead Institute and the National Nodal point for the National Innovations in Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA) which is being implemented at large number of Research Institutes of ICAR, State Agricultural Universities and 100 KVKs.

ICRISAT

The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) is a non-profit non-political organization that conducts agricultural research for development in the drylands of Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
ICRISAT and its partners help empower poor people to overcome poverty, hunger and a degraded environment through better agriculture.
ICRISAT is headquartered in Hyderabad, Telangana State, in India, with two regional hubs (Nairobi, Kenya and Bamako, Mali) and country offices in Niger, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Ethiopia and Mozambique.

National Rainfed Area Authority (NRAA)

NRAA was established as per decision of Cabinet on 3rd November 2006 as an expert body of Ministry of Agriculture to provide the much needed knowledge inputs regarding systematic up-gradation and management of country’s dry land and rainfed agriculture.

Agriculture Contingency Plan

Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture (CRIDA), ICAR has prepared district level Agriculture Contingency Plans in collaboration with state agricultural universities using a standard template to tackle aberrant monsoon situations leading to drought and floods, extreme events (heat waves, cold waves, frost, hailstorms, cyclone) adversely affecting crops, livestock and fisheries (including horticulture).
Total 614 district agriculture contingency plans are placed in the ‘farmer portal’ of the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Government of India (http://www.farmer.gov.in) and also in the ICAR / CRIDA website (http://www.crida.in) for downloading the full plan by stakeholders for operational use.

Improved dryland technologies

Following are the various improved techniques and practices recommended for achieving the objective of increased and stable crop production in dryland areas.

Crop planning: Crop varieties for dryland areas should be of short duration through resistant tolerant and high yielding which can be harvested within rainfall periods and have sufficient residual moisture in soil profile for post-monsoon cropping.
Planning for weather: Variation in yields and output of the dryland agriculture is due to the observation in weather conditions especially rainfall.
Crop substitution: Traditional crops/varieties which are inefficient utilizer of soil moisture, less responsive to production input and potentially low producers should be substituted by more efficient ones.
Cropping systems: Increasing the cropping intensities by using the practice of inter cropping and multiple cropping is the way of more efficient utilization of resources.
Other technologies include: Watershed management, Rain water management, Alternate Land use etc.

The following is the list of aberrant weather conditions prevailing in Dryland areas:

Inadequate and uneven distribution of rainfall
Long gap in rainfall
Early onset of monsoon
Late onset of monsoon
Early cessation of rains
Prolonged Dry spells/mid-term correction during the crop period

Contingent Crop Plans

Change in normal crop planning to meet weather abnormalities.

1) Inadequate and Uneven Distribution of Rainfall In general, the rainfall is low and highly variable which results in uncertain crop yields. Besides its uncertainty, the distribution of rainfall during the crop period is uneven, receiving high amount of rain, when it is not needed and lack of it when crop needs it.

(a) Cultivation of low water required crops
(b) Short duration crops grown
(c) Providing lifesaving irrigation

2) Long Gap in Rainfall

(a) Increase in seed rate to obtain more population
(b) Spraying of urea solution
(c) Providing lifesaving irrigation at critical growth stages
(d) Weeding and intercultural operations

3) Early Onset of Monsoon

Cultivate Pearlmillet, Sesamum etc.

4) Late Onset of Monsoon Due to late onset of monsoon, the sowing of crops are delayed resulting in poor yields.

(a) Alternate crop & varieties: Castor (Aruna), greengram, cowpea, sunflower
(b) Dry sowing/Kurra sowing
(c) Pre sowing
(d) Seed soaking/treatment
(e) Transplanting of one month old Bajra seedlings.
(f) Complete weed control
(g) Grow legumes/oilseed crops in place of cereals
(h) Most suitable crop for this condition is Sunflower.

5) Early Cessation of Rains Sometimes the rain may cease very early in the season exposing the crop to drought during ﬂowering and maturity stages which reduces the crop yields considerably

(a) Select short duration varieties
(b) Using mulching/mulches
(c) Lifesaving irrigation applied
(d) Decrease in plant population

6) Prolonged Dry Spells Long breaks in the rainy season is an important feature of Indian monsoon. These intervening dry spells when prolonged during crop period reduces crop growth and yield and when unduly prolonged crops fail.

(a) If dry spell in 10 days of sowing, resowing
(b) If mild moisture stress at 30-35 days after sowing, thinning of alternate rows of Sorghum and Pearlmillet
(c) If severe moisture stress at 30-35 days after sowing, cutting of sorghum and Pearlmillet and rationing
(d) If moisture stress at blooming stage, cutting of sorghum and Pearlmillet and ratooning
(e) Breaking of monsoon for short while, shallow inter cultivation for eradicating weeds/soil mulch
(f) Wider spacing for moisture conservation
(g) Spray of 2 per cent urea after drought period is useful for indeterminate crops like castor, pigeonpea and groundnut
(h) Soil mulching to reduce evaporation losses
(i) In situ water harvesting
(j) Lifesaving irrigation
(k) Weed control to save water, nutrients etc.

Dryland Implements

CRIDA-Drill-plough: Seed cum fertilizer device attached to country plough.
Ridge seeder: Two row bullock drawn seeder (developed in AICRPDA, Hisar).
CRIDA seed cum fertilizer drill: Three row seed cum fertilizer drill, no covering of seed and fertilizer.
Fepso plough: Bullock drawn implement for seeding and band placement of fertilizer (developed in CRIDA, Hyderabad)
Rayala Gorru: Seed cum fertilizer device cover the same simultaneously (developed in AICRPDA, Anantapur)

Length of Growing Period (LGP)

Length of growing period is deﬁned as “a period in which the available soil moisture is enough to meet the evapotranspiration requirement of dry land crops and hence the dry land productivity is assured”.

Characteristics of Dry Farming Eco zones

Drought

The moisture deﬁcit which results when the amount of water vapour available in the soil is not sufficient to meet the demand of potential evapo-transpiration.

Types of Drought

Drought Avoidance

Ability of plants to maintain a favourable internal water balance under moisture stress.

Drought Tolerance

Ability of plants to withstand low tissue water content.

Drought Resistance

Ability of crop plants to grow, develop and reproduce normally under moisture deficit condition or survival of plants under water deficit conditions without injury.
It is a sum of drought avoidance and drought tolerance.

Drought Hardening

Improvement in drought tolerance ability of a genotype through various seed and seedling treatments.
Seed hardening is the process of subjecting seeds before sowing to alternate cycle of wetting and drying to induce tolerance to drought.

Drought condition initiate

Accumulation of Amino Acid proline
Synthesis of ABA
K and Mg deficiency occurs. E.g. During drought condition, Mg deficiency occurs in cotton leaves.

Remedies of Drought

Spraying of 2 per cent Urea/DAP
Foliar spray of 0.5 – 1 per cent KCl
Use of Anti-transpirents
Foliar spray of 500 ppm Cycocel (CCC)

Anti-transpirants

Any material applied to transpiring plant surfaces for reducing water loss.

National Innovations on Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA)

National Innovations on Climate Resilient Agriculture was launched during February 2011 by ICAR with the funding from Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India. The mega project has three major objectives of strategic research, technology demonstrations and capacity building.

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