Agriculture

An Overview of Crop Calendars in India: Objectives & Importance

Updated on 16th December, 2025, By Gaurav Singh

Share

An Overview of Crop Calendars in India: Objectives & Importance

A crop calendar is a vital tool for farmers, helping them plan and optimize their farming activities throughout the year. It provides a systematic schedule of agricultural activities for farmers, including sowing, fertilizer applications, harvesting, and crop rotation plans. In this blog, we will explore the crop calendar, its objectives, importance, components, and other relevant details.

What is a Crop Calendar?

Crop calendars are developed to help farmers schedule sowing and harvesting times for a variety of crops. It includes key agricultural events, such as land preparation dates, sowing/planting dates, emergence, flowering, maturity, and harvest dates, which are influenced by both climate conditions and crop management practices.

What is the Objective of the Crop Calendar in India?

The crop calendar holds an essential place in Indian agriculture, as it enables farmers to plan the timing of cultural practices for various crops in advance. The main objectives of a crop calendar in India are:

It helps learn the actual timing of sowing and harvesting of various crops.
It assists in proper labour distribution.
It facilitates money management.
It helps with efficient crop management.
It helps farmers learn the actual time for applying pesticides and fertilizers.
It assists in tracking the outcome of various farming practices.

What is the benefit of using a Crop Calendar?

A crop calendar offers many benefits to farmers, such as:

It indicates the time at which production practices for each crop must be performed.
It systematizes farming and helps with efficient farm management.
It helps bankers and other institutions in the distribution of loans to the farmers and realization of loans from the farmers.

What are the components of a Crop Calendar?

The major components of a crop calendar are:

Land preparation
Sowing/planting
Cultural Operations
Harvesting
Post-harvest Operations

A crop calendar contains the actual timing of all these components, and it varies from one crop to another.

What is the Sowing and Harvesting Time of Different Crops region-wise?

Indian states are divided into five different zones, including the Eastern zone, the Northern zone, the Central zone, the Western zone, and the Southern zone. The sowing and harvesting time of various crops in different zones is listed below:

Eastern Zone

The major Indian states in the Eastern zone are Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Sikkim, and West Bengal.

Seasons	Crop	Sowing Time	Harvesting Time
Kharif	Rice	Mid of June	October - November
	Maize	Mid of May	1^st week of October
	Groundnut	Mid of June	Mid of September – Mid of October
Rabi	Wheat	Mid of November	Mid of March
	Barley	Mid of October	Mid of March
	Gram	Mid of October – Mid of November	Mid of March
Summer/Zaid	Moong	Mid of March	End of May
	Till	Mid of February	End of June

Northern Zone

The Northern zone consists of various Indian states, such as Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab, and Rajasthan. Wheat and rice are the prominent crops grown in the Northern states of India. The sowing and harvesting of wheat and rice crops are done using super seeders and combine harvesters, respectively.

Seasons	Crop	Sowing Time	Harvesting Time
Kharif	Maize	End of June – Mid July	End of October
	Paddy	End of June	1^st week of October
	Sorghum	Mid of June	End of September
Rabi	Wheat	November	Mid of April
	Mustard	October	Mid of March
	Chickpeas	Mid of October – End of November	Mid of March – 1^st week of April

Central Zone

The central zone consists of four major Indian states, including Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.

Seasons	Crop	Sowing Time	Harvesting Time
Kharif	Paddy	1^st week of July	1^st week of October
	Maize	Mid of June	End of October
	Jowar	1^st week of July	1^st week of October
Rabi	Wheat	November - December	1^st week of April
	Barley	November	End of March
	Gram	November	Mid of February
Summer/Zaid	Mentha	January	Mid of May
	Bhindi (Okra)	End of February	End of May
	Moong	March – April	May – June

Western Zone

The western zone features three states of India, including Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Goa.

Seasons	Crop	Sowing Time	Harvesting Time
Kharif	Paddy	June – July	October – November
	Bajra	Mid of June	Mind of September
	Groundnut	1^st week of June	End of September
Rabi	Wheat	Mid of November	1^st week of March
	Gram	Mid of November	Mid of February
	Cumin	Mid of November	End of February
Summer/Zaid	Urad	February – March	May – June
	Rice	January – February	May – June
	Sorghum	February – March	May

Southern Zone

The Southern zone consists of different states, such as Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu. Rice is the major crop cultivated in Southern India. Its sowing is done by rice transplanters, and harvesting is done using rice harvesters.

Seasons	Crop	Sowing Time	Harvesting Time
Kharif	Paddy	1^st week of June	Mid of October
	Groundnut	May – June	September – October
	Redgram	June	December
Rabi	Greengram	November – December	January – February
	Horsegram	October	January – February

Conclusion

Crop calendars are designed to help farmers schedule suitable sowing and harvesting times for a variety of crops. Following the schedule of a crop calendar will help farmers perform various farming operations at the right time, resulting in better yield and productivity. You can explore Tractorkarvan to learn about the cultivation process of different crops in India.

Published By

Gaurav Singh

Gaurav is an SEO professional experienced in Agriculture & Travel industry. His love for automobile has translated in delivering expert content for Tractor & farm machinery related topics. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Botany. When not working on SEO, he loves to play cricket and explore new places, constantly seeking inspiration from new experiences and creative expressions.