Important Types of Agriculture Crops

1. Arable crops: Crops which are cultivated on ploughed land. They are annualcrops and include cereals, root crops, tobacco, sugarcane, maize and potatoes.

2 . Aromatic crops: The crop/plants contain odoriferous and volatile substances, which occur as essential oils, gum exudates, balsam and oleoresin in one or more part of plant, viz. wood, bark, foliage, flower and fruit are called Aromatic plants.

(Agriculture Crops)

3. Alley Crops: Alley crops or hedge-row intercrops is grown under an agroforestry practice in which perennial, preferably leguminous trees or shrubs are grown simultaneously with arable crop. The trees, managed as hedgerows,are grown in wide rows and the crop is planted in the interspace or ‘alley’ between the tree rows. e.g. Sweet potato, Black gram, Turmeric & Ginger are grown in the passages formed by the rows of Eucalyptus, Subabul and Cassia etc.

4 . Augment Crops: Such crops are grown to supplement the yield of the main crops. e.g. Japanese mustard with berseem.

5. Avenue Crops: Such crops are grown along farm roads and fences e.g. Pigeon pea, Glyricidia sisal etc.

(Agriculture Crops)

6 . Border/Guard Crops: Such crops protect another crops from trespassing of animals or restrict the speed of wind and are mainly grown as border e.g. safflower (thorny oilseed crop) is planted around the field of gram.

7 . Cash Crops: A crop, such as tobacco, grown for direct sale rather than for livestock feed or a crop grown by a farmer primarily for sale to others rather than for his or her own use e.g. sugarcane, cotton, jute, tobacco etc.

8 . Catch/Contingent Crops: Such crops are cultivated to catch the forthcoming season when main crop is failed e.g. Linseed, toria, urd, moong, cowpea etc.

9. Contour Crops: Crops are grown on or along the contour line to protect the land from soil erosion e.g. marvel grass etc.

(Agriculture Crops)

10. Cover Crops: A close-growing crop grown primarily to improve and protect the soil from erosion through their ground covering foliage and/or rootmats between periods of regular crop production e.g. Lobia, groundnut, urd, sweet potato, methi etc.

11. Complementary Crops: Both main and intercrop is benefited to each other e.g. Jowar + Lobia.

12. Competitive Crops: Such crops compete to each other and are unsuitable for intercropping e.g. two cereals.

13. Exhaustive Crops: These crops leave the field exhaustive after growing e.g. Cereals (Rice)

14 . Energy Crops: An energy crop is a plant grown as a low cost and low maintenance harvest used to make biofuels, or directly exploited for its energy content e,g, sugarcane, potato, maize, topioca.

(Agriculture Crops)

15. Fouling Crops: Such crops whose culture practices allow the infestation of weeds intensively e.g. direct seeded upland rice.

16 . Ley Crops: Any crop or combination of crops is grown for grazing or harvesting for immediate or future feeding to livestock e.g. Berseem + Mustard.

17. Medicinal crops: The crop/plant contain alkaloids, glycosides, steroids or other groups of compounds of medicinal value, which is used commercially, such plants are called Medicinal plants.

18. Mulch Crops: Such crops are grown to conserve the soil moisture through their ground covering foliage e.g. cowpea.

19. Nurse Crops: A crop of trees (nurse trees), shrubs or other plants introduced to foster or nourishment of another crops by i.e. shading it, protecting it from frost, insolation or wind. The widest use of nurse crops is in the establishment of leguminaceous plants such as alfalfa, clover e.g. Sunhemp in sugarcane, Jowar in cowpea, Rai in pea.

(Agriculture Crops)

20 . Paira/Utera Crops: The seed of succeeding crops like lentil, gram, pea, lathyrus, berseem, linseed etc. is sown broadcast at 10 to 15 days before harvesting rice crop. This practice saves time; money (to be spent on land preparation etc.) utilizes residual fertility. This practice is common in both upland and lowland rice culture.

Read More-