India
Indian agriculture runs on three cropping seasons, and most nutrition programmes are written as if there were one. Kharif is the monsoon crop, sown with the rains from around June and harvested from September. Rabi is the winter crop, sown from October and harvested...
India
An apple that develops bitter pit in a cold store in January was already going to develop it in June. Nothing that happens after harvest causes the disorder. Storage only reveals it. That is the part growers in Shimla, Kinnaur, Kullu, Baramulla and Shopian find...
India
Nobody decided to remove sulphur from Indian agriculture. It happened as a side effect of two changes that were both improvements. The first was fertilizer modernisation. Single superphosphate carries around 12 per cent sulphur and ammonium sulphate carries about 24...
India
A potato grower on a processing contract is not paid for tonnes. They are paid for dry matter, fry colour and size grade, and a load that misses the specification gets downgraded to table stock at a fraction of the price. Dry matter is the number that governs the...
India
Most fertilizer buying decisions in India are made on the analysis. Two products both say 13-0-45, so the cheaper one wins. The format is a separate decision, and it usually matters more to whether the season goes well. Format determines how fast the product...
India
A grower finds sunken black patches on the underside of the fruit, looks it up, reads that it is a calcium deficiency, and applies calcium. The next picking looks the same. That sequence repeats across Indian tomato growing every season, and the reason it fails is...
