Maize and Indian mustard are significant crops in semi-arid climate zones of India. Improved water management requires precise scheduling of irrigation, which in turn requires an accurate computation of daily crop evapotranspiration (ETc). Daily crop evapotranspiration comes as a product of reference evapotranspiration (ET0) and the growth stage specific crop coefficients modified for daily var...

Vertisols occur extensively in centralIndiaand have high production potentials. Because of the high clay content (40-60% or more), high bulk density (1.5-1.8 Mg m-3) and related properties, these soils have high moisture storage capacity. Conversely, these soils become very hard when dry and very sticky when wet. Since last two decades, scientists, farmers and also the policy makers have be...

The present study in a two-year experiment investigated the influence of drought and sowing time on protein composition, antinutrients, and mineral contents of wheat whole meal of two genotypes differing in their water requirements. Different thermal conditions prevailing during the grain filling period under different sowing time generated a large effect on the amount of total soluble proteins...

Freshwater resources in the North China Plain (NCP) are near depletion due to the unceasing overexploitation of deep groundwater, by far the most significant source of freshwater in the region. To deal with the deepening freshwater crisis, brackish water (rich but largely unused water in agriculture) is increasingly being used in irrigation in the region. However, inappropriate irrigation with ...

Phosphorus (P) is the second most important crop nutrient after nitrogen that increases productivity and profitability of maize (Zea mays L.) on P deficient soils in Northwest Pakistan. The objective of this study was to find the best level and time of P application for higher maize (cv. Azam) productivity and profitability. Field experiment was conducted at the Research Farm of Khyber Pakhtunk...

Crop depends on its canopy to intercept solar radiation to drive both assimilation and water, nutrient absorption for its growth. Field experiments, involving three sowing time and three sowing rate, were conducted at Luancheng Station to investigate the effects of canopy size and development on crop growth and radiation use efficiency (RUE) of winter wheat during 2009/2010 and 2010/2011 gr...

Rice–wheat cropping system is very common in India. It contributes to over 70% of total food grain production in the country with an area of 12 M ha under this cropping system. However, it is estimated that under rice and wheat crops separately the area is 42.31 and 22.98 M ha respectively. Looking to the above facts a study at farmer’s field of Ambedkar Nagar district was under taken to evalua...

The response of wheat crops to elevated CO2 (eCO2 ) was measured and modelled with the Australian Grains Free-Air CO2 Enrichment experiment, located at Horsham, Australia. Treatments included CO2 by water, N and temperature. The location represents a semi-arid environment with a seasonal VPD of around 0.5 kPa. Over 3 years, the observed mean biomass at anthesis and grain yield ranged from 4200 ...

Herbage yield of alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) depends on forage management or environmental conditions that change C and N resource acquisition, and endogenous plants factors such as root organic reserves and number of active meristems. The aim of this work is to study the influence of two sowing dates in summer (12 July or 9 August), N fertilization (0 or 100 kg ha(-1)) and/or irrigation appli...