Cropping Systems

In India many rotations of crops involving wheat are feasible. In the irrigated areas a variety of crops like rice, jowar, pearl millet, maize, cotton, toria, pigeon pea, moong, urdbean etc., are grown in rotation with wheat. Some of the most common cropping systems are given below:

 

 

Rotation	Duration
1.Rice-Wheat	1 year
2.Maize-Wheat	1 year
3.Pigeonpea-Wheat	1 year
4.Pearlmillet-Wheat	1 year
5.Maize-Wheat - Cotton - Berseem (Egyptian clover)	2 year
6.Rice-Wheat-sorghum-Chickpea	2 year
7.Maize-Wheat-Sugarcane-Ratoon	3 yea
8.Maize-Wheat-Green-manuring-Potato-Sugarcane	3 year

 

         With development of short duration and photo-insensitive varieties of various crops in areas with assured irrigation, a series of cropping sequences with wheat as one of the main crops have been developed. These cropping sequences have been designated as 'Crop Cafeteria' which denotes that farmers can choose any cropping sequence best suited to their areas depending on agronomic considerations, marketing facilities for the produce, profitability of the cropping sequence, etc. The flexibility in sowing time of high yielding dwarf varieties of wheat and the possibility of growing a successful crop of late sown wheat make possible the adoption of multiple cropping with wheat as one of the main crops of assured irrigated areas. A number of cropping sequences have been tried successfully at various places. Some of them are given below:

1. Maize - Toria - Wheat	1 year
2. Maize - Potato - Wheat	1 year
3. Pigeon Pea - wheat - Moong (Green Gram)	1 year
4. Soybean - Wheat - Moong (Green Gram)	1 year
5. Rice - Wheat - Lobia (cowpea)	1 year
6. Rice - Potato - Moong (Green Gram)	1 year
7. Maize - Toria - Wheat - Moong (Green Gram)	1 year
8. Maize - Wheat - Cheena (proso millet)	1 year

 

       Mixed cropping of wheat with mustard, chickpea, and linseed is common in most of the areas of wheat growing belt. Now-a days intercropping with autumn sugarcane and potato is also becoming popular in some of the parts of northern India.