Crop Rotation
- September 2, 2021
- Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
- Category: DPN Topics
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Crop Rotation
Subject – Agriculture
Context – Implement crop rotation. This can to a large extent ease Punjab’s agrarian crisis.
Concept –
- Crop rotation is the practice of growing a series of different types of crops in the same area across a sequence of growing seasons.
- It reduces reliance on one set of nutrients, pest and weed pressure, and the probability of developing resistant pest and weeds.
- Conversely, a well-designed crop rotation can reduce the need for synthetic fertilizers and herbicides by better using ecosystem services from a diverse set of crops.
- Additionally, crop rotations can improve soil structure and organic matter, which reduces erosion and increases farm system resilience.
Monocropping
- Growing the same crop in the same place for many years in a row, known as monocropping.
- It gradually depletes the soil of certain nutrients and selects for a highly competitive pest and weed community.
- Without balancing nutrient use and diversifying pest and weed communities, the productivity of monocultures is highly dependent on external inputs.