I–M
Indigenous microorganisms (IMO)
Fungi, bacteria and yeasts collected from your own land and multiplied at home, rather than bought in a bottle. The backbone of Korean Natural Farming, and the same thinking behind ZBNF's jeevamrut and beejamrut.
Related guides →Input cost
What you actually spend on seed, fertiliser, pesticide, water, labour, fuel and machinery for a crop. Writing it down operation by operation is the only way to know whether a good yield also made money.
Related guides →Insecticide resistance
What happens when the same product is used repeatedly: the few pests that survive breed, and within a few seasons the spray stops working at any dose. Rotating between different modes of action, not just different brand names, is what prevents it.
Related guides →Intercropping
Growing two crops together in the same field in a planned row pattern, such as soybean with tur. If one crop fails or its price falls, the other still brings something home.
Related guides →IPM (Integrated Pest Management)
A way of managing pests that combines weekly field scouting, protecting natural enemies, traps and resistant varieties, and treats chemical spray as a last step used only once a pest crosses a damaging level.
Related guides →Keyline design
A whole-farm way of reading a slope and moving rain gently from the wet valley folds towards the dry ridges. Think of it as a more precise version of the contour bunding many Indian farmers already do.
Related guides →Kharif
The monsoon cropping season, sown with the first good rains around June and harvested from about September onwards. Its crops mostly live on rainfall, so sowing timing follows the monsoon, not the calendar.
Related guides →Kisan Credit Card (KCC)
A bank credit limit for crop and allied expenses that you draw and repay as the season needs, instead of taking a fresh loan each time. Limits, interest and interest-subvention rules are revised periodically, so ask your bank branch for what applies now.
Related guides →Kitchen garden
A small patch near the house grown for the family's own vegetables and herbs, picked fresh as needed. It cuts the vegetable bill, uses kitchen waste as compost, and needs no land beyond a few square metres.
Related guides →Ladybird Beetle
A small, dome-shaped, shiny beetle — usually red, orange or yellow with black spots — whose adults and grey-blue, alligator-shaped larvae both hunt aphids and mealybugs. A single larva can eat several dozen aphids a day.
Related guides →Late Blight
A fungal disease of potato and tomato showing dark, water-soaked, fast-spreading leaf lesions with pale fuzzy growth underneath in humid weather. It spreads explosively in cool, wet conditions and can destroy a crop within days.
Related guides →Layering (plant propagation)
Rooting a branch while it is still attached to the mother tree, then cutting it away as a ready sapling. Gootee, or air layering, is how most pomegranate, guava and lemon plants in local nurseries are actually raised.
Related guides →Lazy bed
Raised ridges built with a spade by folding turf inward, leaving furrows that drain on their own. An old Irish and Scottish answer to boggy ground, and still a good trick for waterlogged clay and monsoon-hit plots.
Related guides →Leaf Curl Virus
A whitefly-transmitted virus in which leaves curl up or down and thicken along the veins, with stunted growth and poor flowering or fruit set — worst in cotton, chilli and tomato. There is no cure, so control the whitefly and remove infected plants.
Related guides →Living fence
A boundary of closely planted trees or thorny shrubs that grows into a barrier instead of being built from posts and wire. It keeps stock in, costs almost nothing to maintain, and gives fodder and fuel on the side.
Related guides →Loamy soil
A balanced mix of sand, silt and clay, and the easiest soil to farm. It holds enough moisture for the crop yet still drains, and suits almost every crop without special handling.
Related guides →Maize
Makka, one of the few cereals grown in both kharif and rabi, used for food, poultry feed and starch. Fall armyworm scouting in the whorl is now part of routine maize care.
Related guides →Mandi
The regulated wholesale market yard where your produce is weighed, auctioned and paid for, through licensed traders and commission agents. Knowing your mandi's arrival pattern tells you which days fetch better rates.
Related guides →Mango
Aam, a perennial orchard tree that fruits once a year and needs a fixed month-by-month care calendar. Flowering-time hopper and powdery mildew control is what saves the crop.
Related guides →Mason bee
A solitary bee that nests in small hollow tubes instead of a hive and makes no honey, but pollinates fruit blossom far more efficiently than honeybees. A bundle of hollow stems near the orchard is enough to invite it.
Related guides →Mealybug
Slow-moving, soft-bodied sap-suckers covered in a white waxy coating, clustering in leaf axils and along stems like small tufts of cotton wool. Common on cotton, papaya, guava and grapes, where their honeydew leads to sooty mould.
Related guides →Micronutrient
Nutrients like zinc, boron, iron and sulphur that crops need in very small amounts but cannot do without. A shortage shows up as odd yellowing or poor flowering even when you have applied plenty of NPK.
Related guides →Milch cattle
Cows and buffaloes kept for milk, as against draught or breeding animals. How many milch animals a household keeps in milk at one time is what decides its steady daily income from dairying.
Related guides →Mixed grazing
Grazing two species together — cattle with sheep or goats — so each eats what the other leaves and each breaks the other's parasite cycle. Pastoral herders across India have long moved mixed flocks this way.
Related guides →Miyawaki forest
A method of planting native species very densely on prepared soil so they compete upward and close canopy within a few years. It turns a small patch of waste ground into a real thicket surprisingly fast.
Related guides →Monsoon
The seasonal rain-bearing winds that decide India's kharif crop — the south-west monsoon from roughly June to September, and the north-east monsoon that waters much of the south from October. Sowing dates are set by its arrival.
Related guides →MOP (muriate of potash)
The main potash fertiliser, used where soil tests show potassium is short. Potash helps stalks stand up, fruit fill properly and the plant handle drought and disease better.
Related guides →Mosaic Virus
A virus showing an irregular mottled pattern of light and dark green patches on leaves, often with distortion or blistering, stunted growth and smaller fruit. Spread mainly by aphids and by hands and tools during pruning; certified virus-free seed is the best prevention.
Related guides →MSP (Minimum Support Price)
The floor price the government announces for notified crops before the season, at which government agencies procure. It only helps you in practice where procurement centres actually operate, so check your district's arrangement each season.
Related guides →Mulching
Covering the soil between plants with straw, crop residue, dry leaves or plastic sheet. Mulch cuts evaporation, keeps weeds down and stops the surface from crusting in the summer heat.
Related guides →Mustard
Sarson, the main rabi oilseed of north and west India, valued for its oil content. It needs little water but suffers badly from aphids at flowering if left unchecked.
Related guides →Mycorrhizal fungi
Soil fungi that join onto crop roots and act as an extra root system, fetching phosphorus and water from far beyond the root's own reach. Heavy tillage and heavy chemicals break this network up.
Related guides →