TRITICUM 



VULGARE 

 Yield 



THE WHEAT PLANT 



Cultiva- 

 tion. 



District 

 Adaptation. 



Sowing and 



.Reaping. 



'Spring Wheat. 



Increasing 

 Temperature 



Yield. 



Dry. 



Irrigated. 



Rotation. 



CULTIVATION. 



Range of Seasons and Crop Adaptations. The antiquity of wheat 

 cultivation in India can be at once realised by the evident direct adaptations 

 of the forms of the crop grown to the varied conditions of soil and climate 

 under which produced. As indicative of this wide range of racial adapta- 

 tions to climatic and other conditions, the following passage from a paper 

 written by me on The Crops and Climatic Conditions of India (Agri. Ledg., 

 1895, No. 3, 38) may be here given : " As a result of these considerations 

 we have the startling state of affairs that a journey from one extreme of 

 India to the other may reveal the cultivators engaged in every stage of the 

 operations connected with certain crops, such as preparing the soil, sowing, 

 watering the advanced crop, reaping, threshing and carrying the produce 

 to market. For example, were the journey made in June from the Panjab 

 to South India, the cultivators would in the north be found engaged in the 

 early preparation of the land, for the crop to be sown in September to 

 December ; in mid journey they would be seen tending the mature kaple 

 wheat of the Konkan ; and in Mysore and some parts of Madras Presi- 

 dency, they would be found sowing wheat a crop that will be harvested 

 in September and thus practically at the very time that the great wheat 

 crop of Northern India is being only sown." In general terms it may be 

 said wheat cultivation increases on passing to the north, in other words, on 

 leaving the humid atmosphere and inundated soils of the south. Indian 

 wheat as a whole might, moreover, be spoken of as comprising a varied 

 assortment of winter wheats, that is to say, the bulk of the Indian crop is 

 sown in autumn and reaped in spring (rabi crop), but except on the hills 

 it has rarely to pass through a winter of frost, so that from the climatic 

 standard the Indian wheats might rather be spoken of as spring wheats. 

 Frosts are, however, not unknown, and often do much harm as the grain 

 is ripening. But unlike the spring wheats of Europe, the Indian crop may 

 in general terms be said to ripen with an increasing, not a decreasing tem- 

 perature. That is to say, from January onwards the approach is rapidly 

 made to the hot season, and by April and May the hottest temperatures 

 of the year are usually recorded. This circumstance, so dissimilar from that 

 of most other wheat-producing countries in the world, may have much to 

 wheat, say to the " ricey " character attributed by the trade to the Indian wheats 

 as a whole. 



Yield. The seed is ordinarily sown in October and ripens in three and 

 a half to four months a good average crop would be about 800 Ib. to the 

 acre. But there may be said to be two subordinate groups, namely dry- 

 crop wheats and irrigated wheats. The increased facilities of canal irriga- 

 tion account largely for the recent expansion of the area and production of 

 irrigation wheats in the Panjab. The possibilities of the future in this 

 direction cannot by any means be regarded as definitely established. 

 Irrigation wheat on land liberally manured may yield from 1,200 to 1,600 

 Ib. an acre. 



Associated Crops. To a large extent wheat is in India interchangeable 

 with other rabi crops, such as linseed or gram, and it is accordingly rotated 

 with these and may be sown alone or mixed with barley or gram or with 

 intervening rows of mustard or safflower. The value of a rotation with 

 leguminous crops is fully understood by the Indian cultivator and uni- 

 versally taken advantage of all over the wheat area. Recently Howard 

 (I.e. ii., pt. ii., 210) has pointed out that in the Eastern Panjab it is 



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