English मराठी हिन्दी

Guides for the orange orchard and Vidarbha field crops

Bahar, water, drip, fruit drop and yellow leaves for Nagpur orange; what to check and when for cotton, soybean, tur and chana. Each guide covers one decision or one season, its timing and what to check. Sources are listed at the end.

Checked on 18 Oct 2026 against published FAO and ICAR guidance with AI assistance. Not yet reviewed by an agronomist or tested with farmers.

1. Nagpur orange bahar management: ambia or mrig, when to stress, when to waterNagpur mandarin should carry one bahar (flowering flush) a year: ambia (flowers in January and February) or mrig (flowers in June and July). Taking a bahar means withholding water for a set period and restarting it before flowering. Get the timing wrong and flowering is poor or fruit drops.
2. How much water does an orange tree need? When to irrigate Nagpur orangeIrrigate citrus by soil moisture, not by the calendar. Water when the root-zone soil is drying out; hold off when it is still moist. Demand is highest in summer, lowest in winter and zero during the bahar stress; do not let a gap fall at flowering and fruit set. The satellite shows when leaves are under stress; the soil you still have to check yourself.
3. Drip irrigation for orange trees: a month-by-month scheduleWith drip you decide two things: how long to run each day and how many days apart. Both depend on tree age, emitter flow, soil and month. This guide gives no numbers; it gives the method and the direction by month. Confirm the numbers for your orchard with an agronomist.
4. Citrus fruit drop: causes, and what to check firstSome drop after fruit set is natural; the tree sheds what it cannot carry. The worrying drop follows a sudden water stress or a sudden flood, a sharp weather change, or disease. The stalk and the skin of a fallen fruit usually tell you which. No product is named in this guide; if you suspect disease, show a sample to the KVK.
5. Why citrus leaves turn yellow: read the pattern, find the cause, then actYellow leaves have more than one cause, and three questions narrow it down. Which leaves (old or new), where on the leaf (green veins or uniform yellow), and where in the orchard (all trees or a few)? Waterlogging, nutrient deficiency, root trouble and natural leaf fall are the main causes. No fertiliser or product is named here; read the pattern and ask the KVK.
6. What are ambia and mrig bahar? Choosing the right one for your orchardThree tests decide it: how much water you have in summer, which month you want to sell in, and which bahar the trees carried last year. Scarce summer water favours mrig; a winter market with summer water favours ambia. Once chosen, keep it.
7. Water stress: the sign on the tree, the sign in the soil, the sign from the satelliteWater stress shows in three places, and the three do not show at the same time. First in the soil (moisture runs out), then on the leaves (wilting at midday, recovering by evening), and last from the satellite (greenness and the water index fall). So when the satellite warning arrives the stress may already be days old; treat it as a prompt to check at once.
8. Nagpur orange season: when to harvest ambia and mrig fruitHarvest timing comes from three things: fruit maturity, the market's prices and arrivals, and the next days' weather. Maturity means colour, size, juice and the sugar-to-acid balance; rain stops harvest and spoils fruit. Maturity can be tested in the orchard; a test is given here, not a number.
9. Weather and irrigation: how the five-day forecast changes the watering scheduleThe weather decides how much water a tree uses: sun, temperature, wind, dry air. So adjust the watering schedule a little every week from the forecast. Rain coming: postpone. Hot dry wind coming: shorten the interval. The weekly message carries the next days' forecast.
10. What is satellite farming? What a satellite sees in your orchard, and what it cannotA satellite is a camera in the sky. A few pass over India every 5 days and their images are free. One tree is not visible, but whether a block of the orchard changed since last week is. That is what we tell you on WhatsApp every week. Under cloud, we say so.
11. Ambia bahar orange crop insurance in Maharashtra: what it covers, who can enrol, how to applyAmbia bahar orange insurance in Maharashtra is the Restructured Weather Based Crop Insurance Scheme under PMFBY. It pays when your area's reference weather station records a notified trigger, such as heat or unseasonal rain, not when you count loss in your own orchard. Dates and amounts change every year, so read the current notification.
12. Nagpur orange planting (santra lagwad): soil, spacing, pit size, rootstock and planting timePlant Nagpur orange at 6 m by 6 m in 75 cm pits, on well-drained soil at least 1 m deep. Use certified budded plants on rough lemon or Rangpur lime rootstock and plant in July. Dig the pits in May and fill them in June. This is the advice of ICAR-CCRI Nagpur and Dr. PDKV, Akola for Vidarbha.
13. Nagpur orange fertiliser (santra khat vyavasthapan): what to ask your KVK before you applyHow much fertiliser a Nagpur orange tree needs depends on its age, its bahar and your soil. ICAR-CCRI and Dr. PDKV publish dose tables, and they differ, so this guide gives no doses. Test your soil, then take the questions below to your KVK. It also shows how to sample leaves and spot zinc and iron shortage.
14. Nagpur orange season and GI tag: when ambia and mrig bahar fruit reach the marketNagpur orange has two seasons. Ambia bahar fruit, from January and February flowers, is harvested from October to December. Mrig bahar fruit, from June and July flowers, reaches the market in February and March. It carries a Geographical Indication: application no. 385, certificate no. 215 dated 31 March 2014, held by Dr. PDKV, Akola.
15. How to see a satellite image of your own field for free: Copernicus Browser, NASA Worldview and ISRO BhuvanYou can see your own field from space for free on the Copernicus Browser website. Search your village, find your field, pick a recent date with little cloud and switch on the NDVI or false colour layer. A Sentinel-2 pixel is 10 m by 10 m, about 0.025 acre, so one acre is about 40 pixels. Monsoon clouds hide the ground.
16. NDVI full form and meaning: what NDVI is and what it tells you about an orange orchardNDVI stands for Normalized Difference Vegetation Index. It is a number from -1 to +1 worked out from a satellite image. The formula is (NIR minus Red) divided by (NIR plus Red); the more green leaf, the higher the number. In an orange orchard it shows how green the canopy is, not why the greenness changed.
17. Cotton in Vidarbha: what to check, and when, from sowing to pickingIn Vidarbha, cotton sowing follows the rain, not a date: for Akola, ICAR-CICR advises sowing after 75 to 100 mm of rain. Watch pink bollworm with traps from 45 days, rosette flowers at flowering and green-boll checks from boll formation, and watch dry spells and heavy rain. No sprays or doses here: ask your KVK.
18. Soybean in Vidarbha: what to check, and when, from sowing to harvestSow soybean only after the monsoon sets in and about 100 mm of rain has fallen, says the ICAR soybean institute at Indore. Its 2026 advisory gave the third week of June to the first week of July as the best window. Watch girdle beetle from about 25 days, leaf-eating caterpillars, yellow mosaic, and dry spells at the seedling, flowering and pod-filling stages. No sprays or doses here: ask your KVK.
19. Tur (pigeonpea) in Vidarbha: what to check, and when, from sowing to harvestIn Vidarbha, tur is sown in June: early varieties in the first fortnight, medium and late varieties in the second. Watch for blight in low, wet patches in the first seven weeks, wilt and sterility mosaic patches, and pod borer and pod fly from flowering. No sprays or doses here: ask your KVK.
20. Chana (chickpea) in Vidarbha: what to check, and when, from sowing to harvestIn Maharashtra, rainfed chana is sown in the first fortnight of October and irrigated chana from the last week of October to the first week of November. Watch for wilt in the first month and again at flowering, and for pod borer from flowering under cloudy weather and cooler nights. No sprays or doses here: ask your KVK.

Want a weekly message for your field?

Call us to join. Free to watch. What changed in your field or orchard, every week, with the date and the source.

Call us

How we compute this and what the limits are: the methods page