• Contingency cropping is growing of a suitable crop in place of normally sown highly profitable crop of the region due to aberrant weather conditions.
• Generally short duration pulses like green gram, blackgram and cowpea may suit the situation.
• However if the monsoon turns to be extraordinarily good, opportunity is lost if only short duration crops are sown.
• Farmers with economic strength and motivation for high profits with some amount of risk can go for crops of long duration.
• Long duration crops with flexibility or elasticity in yield are more suitable. Pearl millet and sorghum can be ratooned if monsoon extends.
• Sunflower can be introduced for higher profits with certain amount of risk.
• Crops like sorghum, pearl millet can be grown for grain if monsoon extends and if not, fodder can be obtained.
• Groundnut is sown up to July in the rainfed areas of Andhra Pradesh. If the monsoon is delayed, sunflower, pearl millet, setaria etc. are taken up.
• In case of contingency crops sown in the month of September, spacing of the crops has to be reduced.
• Sunflower, sorghum and pearl millet have to be sown with 30 cm inter row spacing instead of normally adopted 45 cm.
• In general a single crop is being taken in dry farming areas where the annual rainfall is below 500 mm.
• Rainy season crop is taken in light soils like alfisols, inceptisols and oxisols.
• Crops are being grown on residual moisture in vertisols in the post rainy season or winter season.
• In areas where annual rainfall is in the range of 600-850 mm, intercropping is being recommended and practiced.
• Double cropping is feasible in areas receiving rainfall more than 850 mm and soil moisture storage capacity of 200 mm/m depth or 20 cm/m depth.
• Water use efficiency is about 20 g dry matter for kilogram of water for pineapple compared to 3 to 5 g for C4 plants and 2 to 3 g for C3 plants.
• Yield of maize can be improved by selecting genotypes for shorter interval between tasselling to silking.
• Popular hybrids of pearl millet are ICMH-451, HHB-67 and RHRBH-8609.
• Among composites of bajra, ICTP-8204 is very popular.
• Special characters of sunflower are photoperiod insensitivity and faster recovery from drought.
• Sunflower hybrids are performing better than varieties due to higher degree of self fertility and uniform seed development.
• Traditional varieties of castor are tall and long duration. Kranthi and Haritha among the varieties and GCH-3 and GCH-4 among hybrids are medium duration and high yielding.
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