Principles of Agronomy | Complete Overview

The principles of agronomy provide farmers with essential guidelines for achieving optimal crop yield. Agriculture is the backbone of Pakistan, with a significant portion of food and other agro-based products relying on it. To understand agriculture, it is essential to know agronomy, which deals with soil management and crop production.

By adopting the principles of agronomy, such as those related to cotton, wheat, maize, rice, and sugarcane, we can increase our crop yield. Agronomy is the foundation of agriculture, with soil management and crop production intimately connected. Without proper soil management, it is impossible to achieve significant crop yield. Therefore, agronomy plays a crucial role in the country’s GDP.

There are six principles of agronomy that are essential for crop production:

1. Seed selection
2. Soil preparation
3. Irrigation
4. Fertilizer management
5. Pest and disease protection
6. Harvesting and post-harvesting techniques

Selection of seeds:

Seeds are crucial in meeting the increasing demand for food production. Sustainable crop production is largely dependent on new seed varieties that possess better genotypes and can withstand adverse climate conditions. Farmers must select high-quality seeds that are free of weeds and diseases and have high germination power, and purity levels. Low-quality seeds can render a farmer’s efforts fruitless since they are the primary unit of production.

It is crucial to use recommended seed varieties and sow them at the proper time. Farmers should prioritize selecting the right seeds and sowing them at the proper time, despite early or late sowing due to various reasons. It is also essential to use properly labelled seed bags, avoiding fake or impure seeds. After selecting the seed, the main focus should be on the proper seed rate and seed depth in the field. Seed quality and certification are also essential factors, including genetic purity, physical purity, viability, vigour, moisture content, and storage. Farmers should always use insecticides or fungicides mixed with the seeds to prevent pest attacks in the field.

Soil preparation:

Farmers usually use tillage for soil preparation, which mechanically manipulates the soil to improve its physical condition, known as a tilth. Soil type, crop pattern, and climate factors influence the choice of tillage method. Using proper or recommended tillage methods can have a positive effect, as it affects nitrogen uptake and improves soil aeration, structure, temperature, and infiltration rate. However, the current demand is for zero tillage.

Tillage implements have two types’ primary and secondary tillage. The main function of primary tillage is land levelling, removal of weeds, and pulverized soil for this objective we used some implements named Moldboard plough, disc plough, chisel plough, subsoiler, and Rotavator .secondary tillage functions are the preparation of seed beds and conserve soil moisture for this objective we used implements as different Harrows spike tooth harrow, disc harrow, and spring tined harrow

Irrigation:

Irrigation is a crucial growth factor for crops, and without it, plants cannot complete their life cycle or undergo different metabolic growth phases. In Pakistan, limited rainfall is a significant climate factor, with 67-75% of rain occurring in summer and 25-33% in winter. Most of the summer rainfall, especially during monsoons, is not available to crops due to rapid runoff and percolation. An excess or deficiency of water can hinder crop growth and adversely affect crop productivity.

Sources of water for crops include precipitation, dew drops, frost, and different irrigation methods such as surface, border, sprinkle, drip, and central pivot irrigation methods. Proper irrigation planning involves determining the number of irrigations required, how to apply, where to apply, when to apply, and how much to apply. Irrigation efficiency refers to the amount of water that crops use for biomass production, as much of the irrigation water is wasted by leaching, runoff, percolation, and water erosion.

Some irrigation problems include the use of saline water for irrigation, hot or cold water for irrigation, soil drainage, choice of irrigation methods, and salt accumulation in soil. Addressing these problems is crucial for maintaining proper irrigation and ensuring optimal crop growth and productivity.

Fertilizer management

Soils vary in their capacity to provide nutrients to crops in nutritional requirements therefore soil cannot provide all essential nutrients to crops. Fertilizer recondensation is developed for the quantity and quality of various crop nutrients. Three big types of fertilisers are used in Pakistan Nitrogenous fertilisers, phosphorous fertilisers, and potash fertilisers. Phosphorous fertilizers are always used at the time of sowing and nitrogenous fertilizers are used time of sowing also with irrigation remain potash fertilizers are used at the time of lodging or flowers appearance mostly potash fertilizers are used for taste increase as banana and sugarcane crops.

The fertilizer’s efficiency rate also varies but the general rate of fertilizers is that the efficiency of phosphorous fertilizers is near 15-20 %, nitrogenous fertilizers are 50-60% and potash efficiency is near 80-90%. Always used a recommended dose of fertilizers because the high amount of fertilizers causes the burning of the crops .fertilizers have three forms that are simple, complex, and mixed fertilizers. Simple fertilizers contain only one nutrient (NPK), complex fertilizers contain more than one nutrient (NPK)and mixed fertilizers contain three primary nutrients. Urea is simple fertilizer, DAP mixed fertilizers.

If we used green manure crops in the field then the economic cost of production is also low and soil fertility level is also high. Use of organic matter as compost and farm yard manure also used these are nature gifts and by using them farmers can increase their soil fertility level, low the cost of fertilizer, and soil health improved because they have no disadvantages as compared to fertilizers. Fertilizers caused some health issue and eutrophication process that leads to the death of marine animals.

Pest and disease protection

Protection means the prevention of crops from pests, insects, and weeds. Different type of chemicals in the market that is used to destroy insects and pest but they have a high cost of production and create serious issue regards to health and affect crops quality so we used them but also adopted some cultural practices such as different type of traps that attract insect, flooding against larvae and eggs of pest and use of compost.

We suppress weeds by growing green manure crops and use of different biological agents that act as farmers’ friends sometimes we used such types of pesticides that eliminate pests from the field but also damage beneficial pests so avoid such types of pesticides. Not using the same type of pesticides that used the previous year against pests because they modified themselves against such types of pesticides so used different types of pesticides

Harvesting and post-harvesting techniques

 Harvesting of crops should be done by keeping in view the fact of level of maturity. Generally, there are two ways of harvesting crops i.e. manually and mechanically. Both of the ways contain their own merits and demerits. In the case of manual harvesting, along with uniformity regarding that specific crop such as the source of income for labour, no disturbance regarding soil, etc. with the demerits of being time-consuming along with a great amount of labour.

In the case of mechanical harvesting, there is no loss of time as well as labour along with harvesting a maximum number of acres in a short period, but with the demerits of those farmers that contain low area under harvesting can’t afford mechanical harvesting itself also their high rents and by this process, there is loss of soil as compaction and erosion of soil. After harvesting the term so-called post-harvesting is related to packing, storage, and transportation to market. The main point is to keep in mind the support price of that specific crop at the time of sale.

Ali Haider, Noor Fatima, Aoun Abbas and Muhammad Nouman 

University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Pakistan