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Field Preparation |
- Heavy soils and medium soils are suitable for the Safflower.
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Heavy soils require more efforts for land
preparation in this case give two to three deep ploughing so as
to turn the soil using iron plough, after this 3 to 4 harrowing
should be done so as to break the soil clods and make it loose
and friable. This should be followed by patta.
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Deep ploughing should be done once in every
two to three years.
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If the field is having weed problem then
stale seed bed technique can be used.
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Let a heavy flush of weeds emerge and be
destroyed with herbicide before sowing the crop, without any
tillage on it.
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Most of the weeds seeds germinate from the
top 5cm of soil surface in about a weeks time, these weed
seedlings can be destroyed either with a contact herbicide or by
shallow type tillage implement like a spike tooth harrow.
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In stale seed bed technique depending upon
the availability of time and resources one or two flushes of
weeds can be destroyed before planting of the crop.
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Seed & Sowing |
- Seed treatment is done to save the crop from soil borne
diseases during the early stages of the crop growth.
- Seed treatment is done by mixing Thiram or Brosical at the
rate of 3gm per kg of seed.
- If the seeds are certified then there is no need to treat
the seeds again as the seeds are pretreated.
- All necessary precautions should be taken while mixing the
fungicide, it should be ensured that all the seeds get a coat of
the fungicide.
- Before sowing, deep seeds in water for 24 hours for good
germination.
- Seed inoculation with Agrobacterium radiobacter and
Aspergillus awamuri at 25g/kg of seed is beneficial.
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Harvest
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- Harvesting is one of the most crucial operation to ensure
sure yields.
- In general the safflower crop matures in around 140 to 150
days depending upon the variety and agro-climatic region.
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The crop becomes ready for harvest when the
leaves and most of the bracteoles turn brownish and are dry.
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Harvesting should be done with the help of
sickle after wearing gloves as the safflower crop contains
spines.
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Mechanical harvesting can also be done with
the help of tractor drawn implements which eases the
operation.
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Another way of harvesting is uprooting of the
whole plant and then drying the same in open sun for some time
to ensure that all the excess moisture is drained out.
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he harvesting time should be preferably in
the morning hours as during those hours grain shattering is
minimum.
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