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Contents & Foreword, Characterizing And ... - IRRI books

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The eastern India scenarioIn eastern India, consisting of Bihar, Orissa, eastern Madhya Pradesh, eastern UttarPradesh, West Bengal, and the northeastern states (Fig. 1), rice is the major cropgrown in favorable as well as adverse and fragile environments. Except in the irrigatedarea, which is very small, most of the region is monocropped and rice is grownunder rainfed conditions. The rainfed rice ecosystem in eastern India is again dividedinto different subecosystems such as upland, lowland, and flood-prone. The lowlandscan be further subdivided into favorable and drought-prone.These subecosystems, in relation to other cropping and production systems,form the overall agricultural scenario of eastern India. In lowlands, a typical cultivationsystem called the “broadcast beushening” system is adopted, under which riceseeds are broadcast in preplowed fields immediately after the onset of monsoonalrains around 15–30 June. After about 30–35 d, when sufficient water is impounded inthe diked rice fields, the fields are plowed in the standing rice crop. This operation iscalled beushening. Beushening helps (1) reduce the plant population, (2) weed thefields, and (3) create a semipuddled condition to minimize percolation losses to someextent.In irrigated areas and also in a small portion of rainfed areas, transplanting isbeing practiced. In uplands and in light soils, direct seeding through drilling in lines isalso practiced. The broadcast beushening method, however, is widely adopted.Sowing, beushening, and later crop operations depend entirely on the vagariesof monsoonal rains. In addition, winter conditions in certain states of eastern India setBahraichLUCKNOWJabalpurGorakhpurDarjilingMuzaffarpur DarbhangaPATNAGayaDaltenganjHazaribaghKanpurFatehpurAllahabadAmbikapurBurdwanRanchiPuruliaJamshedpurRaigarhCALCUTTARaipurTitlagarhJagdalpurGopalpurSambalpurCuttackBHUBANESHWARDibrubarhTezpur JorhatGUWAHATICherrapunjiSilchar IMPHALAgartalaAizawlFig. 1. Rainfed rice-growing areas of eastern India.Agroclimatic inventory for environmental characterization . . . 217

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