A–D
Acre
A land measure of 4,840 square yards, about 4,047 square metres, and the unit most Indian farmers buy, lease and calculate in. It is smaller than a hectare: 1 hectare = 2.47105 acres, so 1 acre = 0.404686 hectare.
Anthracnose
A fungal disease showing sunken, dark, circular lesions on fruit, often with concentric rings, plus leaf and stem spotting in humid weather. In chilli it is known as fruit rot or die-back and causes heavy post-harvest losses in fruit that looked sound at picking.
Related guides →Aphid (Mahu)
Tiny (1-3 mm), soft, pear-shaped sap-suckers clustered densely on tender shoots and leaf undersides, leaving sticky honeydew with black sooty mould on it. They are also a major virus vector, so early control matters more than the feeding damage.
Related guides →APMC
The state Agricultural Produce Market Committee that licenses traders and runs the mandi where your lot is auctioned. Its rules decide the deductions, weighing practice and payment timelines you face at sale.
Related guides →Artificial insemination (AI)
Getting a cow or buffalo in calf using semen from a proven bull instead of keeping a bull on the farm. It brings better breeding within reach of a small holding, provided she is served at the right time in her heat.
Related guides →Bacterial Blight
A bacterial disease showing water-soaked streaks from leaf tips or margins with a wavy yellow-to-brown edge, sometimes with milky ooze in humid mornings. A major disease of rice and cotton, spread by rain splash, irrigation water, tools and infected seed.
Related guides →Bacterial Wilt
A soil-borne bacterial disease of tomato, brinjal, potato and chilli in which the plant collapses suddenly while its leaves are still green. Cut the stem base and hang it in clear water — milky bacterial streaming within a minute confirms it.
Related guides →Banana
Kela, a perennial-style horticulture crop that gives a bunch in about a year and then keeps ratooning. Tissue-culture planting material gives a far more uniform, disease-free plantation.
Related guides →Banana circle
A ring of banana plants around a hollow compost pit. Kitchen and bath water goes into the pit, the pile filters and holds it, and the bananas drink it slowly — a filter, compost heap and fruit patch in one.
Related guides →Barn owl
A night hunter that lives on rats and field mice, and will settle in a barn or a simple nest box if one is put up. A resident pair can take hundreds of rodents a season — rat control with no poison and no cost.
Related guides →Basal dose
The fertiliser mixed into the soil at or just before sowing, so the young crop finds food waiting at the root zone. Phosphorus and potash are usually given here because they move very little in the soil.
Related guides →Beetle bank
A raised strip of clumpy grass along a field edge, left permanently unmown so ground beetles, rove beetles and spiders can winter there. Come pest season, the predators are already living next door.
Related guides →Beneficial insect
An insect that helps your crop rather than harming it, either by eating pests or by pollinating flowers. Most insects in a field fall in this group, which is why a broad-spectrum spray usually costs you more free pest control than it saves.
Related guides →Bigha
A traditional land measure whose size is not fixed and changes from state to state, and sometimes district to district. Always confirm the local bigha-to-acre conversion before agreeing a rate, rent or subsidy claim.
Bio-intensive spacing
Planting in a hexagonal, offset pattern instead of straight rows, so every plant sits equally far from its neighbours and the leaves close over the soil. That living canopy smothers weeds and holds moisture at no extra cost.
Related guides →Biochar
Charcoal made by charring crop residue with very little air, then mixed into soil. Its pores hold water, nutrients and microbes for decades, so soil that gets biochar keeps improving rather than wearing out.
Related guides →Biofertiliser
Living cultures of helpful bacteria or fungi, such as rhizobium or azotobacter, used to treat seed or soil. They fix nitrogen or unlock phosphorus already in the soil, cutting part of your fertiliser bill.
Related guides →Biopesticide
A pest control product made from living organisms or plant extracts, such as neem, trichoderma or bacillus thuringiensis. It is gentler on beneficial insects and leaves no chemical residue, but it works slower and needs correct timing.
Related guides →Bokashi composting
A Japanese method of fermenting kitchen waste in a sealed bucket with inoculated bran — closer to making pickle than compost. It takes cooked food, meat and dairy that an ordinary heap refuses, and needs no space to turn.
Related guides →Borewell
A narrow deep hole drilled to reach groundwater, pumped up by a submersible or motor. It gives water on demand, but where every farmer deepens his own the water table drops for the whole village.
Related guides →Brinjal
Baingan, a warm-season vegetable picked over many weeks from the same plant. Shoot and fruit borer is its main enemy, and regular removal of bored shoots keeps it down.
Related guides →Broadfork
A steel frame with long tines that you step into the soil and lever back, cracking a hard crust open without turning it over. Gentler on earthworms and fungal networks than a rotavator, and cheap to own.
Related guides →Calving interval
The gap between one calving and the next in the same animal. The longer that gap stretches, the more dry days you feed without milk coming in, so watching heat and getting her served on time protects your margin.
Related guides →Canal irrigation
Water brought to the field from a dam or river through a network of canals, released turn by turn. It costs little to run but you must sow and plan around the release schedule, not your own convenience.
Related guides →Carbon-to-nitrogen ratio
The balance of dry browns to fresh greens in a compost heap. Too much dry matter and the pile sits cold; too much green and it turns slimy and stinks. Getting the mix right is what makes compost work.
Related guides →Chicken moat
Two fences running right around a garden with a narrow lane between them where poultry spend the day. Grasshoppers, beetles and slugs heading for the crop have to cross a lane full of hungry hunters first.
Related guides →Chilli
Mirchi, grown for green picking or dry red chilli, and a high-value but high-risk crop. Thrips-borne leaf curl and fruit rot are what usually take the profit away.
Related guides →Chinampa
A raised bed built inside shallow water and anchored to the bed below, so the water irrigates it constantly by capillary action and dredged canal mud manures it. Useful thinking near a pond, canal or waterlogged low field.
Related guides →Clay soil
Heavy soil made of very fine particles that sticks when wet and cracks when dry. It holds moisture and nutrients well but drains slowly, so drainage and the right ploughing moisture matter more here than anywhere.
Related guides →Cold chain
The unbroken chain of cooling from field to buyer, made of pre-cooling, cold storage, refrigerated transport and a cool market point. One warm gap in the chain undoes all the cooling that came before it.
Related guides →Colostrum
The thick yellowish first milk after calving, loaded with antibodies. The calf must get it within the first few hours of birth, because that is the only window in which its gut can absorb that protection.
Related guides →Compost
Farm and kitchen waste rotted down into a dark, crumbly, sweet-smelling manure. It adds nutrients slowly and steadily and, more importantly, rebuilds the soil's water-holding and structure over the seasons.
Related guides →Contact pesticide
A product that kills only the pests it physically touches, so spray coverage decides the result — miss the leaf undersides and you miss the pest. It breaks down faster than a systemic and usually needs repeating after heavy rain.
Related guides →Coppicing
Cutting a tree back near the base so it throws up new shoots and can be harvested again and again for fuel, poles and fodder — without ever felling it. Neem, subabul and bamboo take to it well.
Related guides →Cost of cultivation
The full cost of growing a crop on a given area, counting both cash spent and the value of your own land, labour and family work. Compare it against gross income per unit area, never against total income alone.
Related guides →Cotton
A long-duration kharif cash crop called kapas, grown mainly in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Telangana. Most of its profit or loss is decided by how well pink bollworm and sucking pests are managed.
Related guides →Cotton Bollworm
A stout green-to-pink caterpillar that bores a clean round hole into cotton bolls, gram and pigeon pea pods or tomato fruit, leaving granular frass at the entry point. Because it feeds hidden inside, scout for holes and frass weekly rather than for the caterpillar.
Related guides →Cotton Jassid
A small, wedge-shaped, pale green leafhopper that moves sideways and flies off the instant it senses a shadow. Its signature damage is hopper burn — leaf margins curling downward and turning bronze, yellow or red — common on cotton, okra and brinjal.
Related guides →Critical irrigation stage
The few growth stages, such as crown root, flowering and grain filling, where missing water costs you the most yield. If water is short, protect these stages first and let the others go.
Related guides →Crop rotation
Changing the crop grown on a plot from season to season instead of repeating the same one. Rotation breaks pest and disease cycles, and a legume in the rotation leaves nitrogen behind for the next crop.
Related guides →DAP (di-ammonium phosphate)
A fertiliser that supplies phosphorus along with some nitrogen, given mainly at sowing because phosphorus is needed early for root growth. Get your soil tested before deciding how much your field actually needs.
Related guides →Deep litter method
Letting dry bedding build up on the coop floor over months so it composts in place, with the birds turning it as they scratch. It controls smell, keeps the coop warm, and finishes as ready manure.
Related guides →Deficit irrigation
Deliberately giving the crop less than its full water need, saving the limited water for the stages where it decides yield. It is a way to cover more area when the well or canal cannot supply everything.
Related guides →Desi (heirloom) seed
Traditional open-pollinated varieties whose seed you can keep from your own crop and sow again with the same result. Yields are usually lower than hybrids but seed cost is nil and local adaptation is better.
Related guides →Dew harvesting
Pulling water from humid night air with a loose stone mound — an air well — that cools faster than the air, so moisture condenses on it. It will not irrigate a field, but it can carry a fruit sapling through a dry spell.
Related guides →Dew pond
A shallow, saucer-shaped basin built to stay cooler than the ground around it, so night moisture condenses into it. It also catches rain and mist, and traditionally kept livestock watered on dry ridges.
Related guides →Dragonfly
A large-eyed insect with a slender body and two pairs of transparent, vein-patterned wings held flat at rest, often darting over ponds, canals and irrigated fields. It catches mosquitoes and other small flying insects on the wing and cannot bite or sting.
Related guides →Drip irrigation
Water delivered drop by drop right at each plant's root through pipes and emitters. Very little is lost to evaporation or runoff, weeds between rows get less water, and fertiliser can be given along with it.
Related guides →Duckweed
A tiny floating water plant that doubles in a couple of days on pond or tank water and carries high protein. Skimmed off fresh, it makes a cheap feed for ducks, fish, poultry and pigs.
Related guides →Dung beetle
A beetle that buries livestock dung underground, taking nutrients and organic matter down with it. Working pastures with healthy dung beetle numbers clear droppings fast, cutting fly breeding and worm burden.
Related guides →Dynamic accumulator
A deep-rooted plant that pulls potash, calcium and other minerals from the subsoil and stores them in its leaves. Cut it, spread the leaves, and those minerals reach your topsoil almost free.
Related guides →