Question

Explain the following terms and name the crops they are associated with: -
a. Retting
b. Ratooning
c. Ginning

Answer 1

Hint: Cultivation refers to the act of growing and raising plants. Retting, Ratooning and Ginning are all kinds of cultivation practised around the world in agriculture.

Complete answer:Let’s understand these three types of cultivations through examples of crops.
a. Retting and Jute crop- Seeds of Jute are sown by broadcasting and drilling methods. They are sown in February on lowlands and in March and June on uplands. The crop is harvested from July to September. The plants are cut after they attain a certain height, and then they are put into a pond for retting, it is a process of degumming, the most widely used retting method is water retting. After peeling the bark, the fibre is rinsed, washed, dried and pressed into bales. After obtaining fibres, they are dried, spun and woven into sacks and carpets.
b. Ratooning and Sugarcane- It is harvested in northern India before the winters to save it from cold and frost. The crop is cut by hand using a long knife. The stalk is cut very close to the ground as the greatest amount of sucrose is in the base of the stem. After harvesting, the sugarcane has to be taken to the mill as soon as possible because the sucrose content starts decreasing after 24 hours of harvesting. In the mills, canes are crushed and boiled with lime to make sugar grains. It is reprocessed to make brown and white sugar. Only one-third of the sugarcane grown in the country is used for making sugar. The remaining two-thirds are used for making gur and khandsari.
c. Ginning and Cotton- The seeds are sown by the drilling or broadcast methods generally before the beginning of rainfall season. The cotton is harvested in October. After harvesting, the cotton crop passes through the following processes: The cotton balls are ginned after harvesting. Ginning is a process of separating cotton fibres from cotton seeds. The cotton fibre is then transported to the manufacturing units. After washing fibres, a rope-like mass of fibre known as sliver is formed. This silver is finally spun to make yarn.

Note: West Bengal is the largest producer of Jute in the country, Sugarcane is mainly grown in Punjab, Bihar, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. Cotton is mainly grown in Deccan, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.