9th Class Science Improvement in food resources Improvement in Crop Production

       Introduction

We know that all the living orga  nisms need food for their survival. We use both plants and animals for our food, but most of our food is obtained from agriculture and animal husbandry. The population of our country is above one billion and still increasing at very fast rate. Hence the demand of food is also increasing day by day, but the land area under cultivation is not increasing and is almost fixed. We do not have enough space for expansion, but at the same time we have to meet the requirement of the food. Therefore, we have to increase the food production using advanced technique for agriculture. While our effort have increased the food production but at the same time it is using the natural resources extensively and is getting depleted very fast. As a result, we are causing more and more da mage to our environment and disturbing the natural balance. Therefore, the need of the hour is to follow sustainable use of resources.

Simply increasing the food production cannot solve the problem of malnutrition and hunger. The food security depends on both availability of food and access to it. The scientific management practices should be undertaken to obtain high yields from agriculture and animal husbandry. The different methods we should follow to increase the food production are mixed farming, intercropping and integrated farming practices.

         Improvement in Crop Production

The successful management of natural resources for agriculture to satisfy the human needs, at the same time maintaining the quality of environment and conserving natural resources, is called sustainable agriculture. Agriculture can also be defined as the science dealing with the mass production of plants and animals, useful for human needs. Different crops require different climatic condition, temperature and photoperiod for the growth and development. In India there are two major crop season Rabi and kharif crop season.

• Rabi Season Crops: The crops which grows during the month of October to March are called rabi crops. For example wheat, rice, grams, pea, mustard, etc.
• Kharif season crops: The crops which grow during summer season i.e. during the month of June to October are called kharif crops. For example paddy, soyabean, arhar, maize, barley etc.

The crop yields can be increased by following methods as:

• Variety Improvement
• Production improvement
• Crop Protection Management

           Crop Variety Improvement

We can improve the crop production by incorporating certain quality like high yields and disease resistant. Such traits can arise through mutation. We can improve the variety of seeds with an incorporation of the desirable character by hybridization, mutation, polyploid, and DNA recombinant technology. A gene of hybrid is inserted into the DNA of lowbrid plants and the plant express DNA of hybrid plant. It is called transgenic plants.

Hybridization: The cross over between genetically dissimilar plants to produce a new kind of plant is called hybridization.

Selection and hybridization is useful in the country like India where repeated mating and selection procedure is used more often than not. In India crops are grown in diverse types of soil and climatic conditions. The yields of the crops depend on the weather condition, soil quality and on the availability of water resources.

The cultivation and yield of crops are directly related to agronomic condition.

The condition are based on soil quality, availability of water resources, and weather condition. The prime objective of crop improvement is to develop superior quality of plants.

Crop variety improvement is done for the following reasons:

• The main aim of crop variety improvement is to increase the production per unit hectare.
• Quality Improvement: Quality consideration of crop products varies from crop to crop. For example, baking quality of wheat, protein quality in pulse, oil quality in oil seed and preserve quality of fruits and vegetables.
• Biotic and abiotic resistance: Crops production can go down due to biotic and abiotic stresses under different condition. Varieties resistance to these stresses can improve crop production.
• Change in maturity duration: Shortening the duration of crop maturity increases the production and multiple crops can be produced at the same time.
• Wider adaptability: Developing the crop varieties of wider adaptability will help in stabilizing the crop production under different environmental conditions and hence will able be produce more crops of different kinds in different region.
• Desirable agronomic traits: Development of crops of desired agronomic traits, such as, cereal plant of dwarf size will help to produce more cereals in the small area and will also intake less nutrients.