Describe the agronomic practices of wheat cultivation

1.Land Preparation
Early seedbed preparation ensures thorough decomposition of organic matter before sowing. A clean, firm seedbed of fine tilt is required by wheat. Special effort should be made to remove as many of the grass weeds as possible and to achieve this, several ploughing and harrowing operations may be necessary.

2.Planting
Mostly drilled sown using planters. High yield in wheat is generally associated with early sowing at the beginning of the rains. Wheat is commonly sown at a seed rate of 100-125 kg/ha. The seed rate may, however, have to be altered depending on the variety, its tillering ability, altitude, adequacy of rainfall and so on. In places where growing period is short, a higher seed rate is recommended.

3.Fertilizer Application
-Many wheat growing soils respond well to phosphate, especially in land newly broken from grass. Hence application of phosphatic fertilizers during the time of planting is recommended. The rate per hectare varies with the type of soil, the cropping and fertilization history of the land, but usually ranges from 50-100 kg/ha P205.
-Nitrogen research findings show that the crop has little response to nitrogenous fertilizers during the first and the second years after breaking the land from grass. However, from the third year onwards the response to nitrogen is greater. Tall varieties tend to lodge if given nitrogen of about 40kg/ha while dwarf varieties perform well at even 120kgN/ha.
-Wheat needs copper in order to produce grains. Thus in a few areas where the soils are deficient in copper, e.g. areas around Nakuru, Mau Narok, Njoro and Menengai in Kenya, wheat performs very poorly.
-In severe cases of deficiency, the plants either produce very small grains or they do not form grains at all.
-In order to correct any deficiency, it is recommended to apply copper oxychloride at the rate of 0.85 kg/ha as seed dressing and another 1.1-1.7 kg/ha of the copper oxychloride is applied with the herbicide spray during weed control.

4.Water use in wheat
-Crown root initiation stage has been found to be the most critical as far as water use is concern.
-In timely sown wheat crop, this stage is reached 3 weeks after sowing. At this stage crown roots develop within 2cm from the surface. Thus lack of water at this stage results in a delay in development of crown roots leading to low yields. Thus irrigation is recommended if there is water deficiency at this time.

5.Weed control
-Because of the close spacing of wheat in the field, hand weed control during crop growth is just not practicable.
-The broad-leaved weeds are controlled in the field by spraying selective herbicide after the plants have developed 4-6 leaves.
-The types of herbicides used do not kill grass type weeds. Hence it is important to eradicate as many grass-type weeds as possible during the seedbed preparation stage.
-After tillering the wheat crop smothers most broad-leaved weeds that attempt to grow following the spraying of the herbicides. A few very noxious weeds, e.g. bindweed (Polygonum convolvulus) are resistant to the common herbicides used in wheat.

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Titany answered the question on August 16, 2021 at 09:21