Indeterminate growth

The flowers are borne on lateral branches, the central stem continuing vegetative growth with blooming continued for a long period like in cotton.

Integrated pest management (IPM)

Integrating  chemical, biological, and cultural controls in an overall pest control program.

Indigenous knowledge (IK)

Knowledge of the people living in certain area, generated by their own and their ancestors, experience and including knowledge originated from elsewhere which has been internalized by the local people.

Inert matter  

Foreign matters such as pieces of broken or damaged seeds, empty glumes, lemmas, paleas, soil, sand chaff, stems etc., and all other matter not seeds.

In situ moisture conservation

A practice adopted for conserving rainwater minimizing runoff or percolation to maximize. The objective of this exercise is to preserve maximum moisture in the soil for use by crops. Moisture conservation can be achieved by several methods: Impounding rainwater with contour and vegetative bunds; Adopting appropriate land configurations through tillage; shallow tillage, for instance, aids in water percolation while deep tillage in black soils modifies the soil profile, forming a hard pan which does not allow percolation into the ground water zone;

Integrated nutrient management  

Judicious use of inorganic, organic and biofertilisers in an integrated manner to maximize production, sustain soil productivity and maintain soil health.

Integrated pest management (IPM)

Economic, ecological environmental and social strategy that focus on long-term prevention or suppression of  pest problems through a combination of techniques such as encouraging biological control, use of resistant varieties or adoption of alternative cultivation practices or modification of habitat to make it incompatible with pest development.

Integrated weed management  

Application of many kinds of weed management technology in a mutually supportive manner.

Intensive cropping

Maximum use of the land by means of frequent succession of harvested crops.

Intercropping

The practice of cultivating two or more crop simultaneously in the same field is called intercropping. In this system, there is a main crop and a subsidiary crop growing simultaneously. The crops grown in such a system do not compete with each other but are compatible.

Irrigation, drip

Drip irrigation involves the application of water, drop by drop to the root zone of the crop. Water is thus used very economically and the losses due to deep percolation and surface evaporation are minimized. The equipment consists of a pumping unit (to create a pressure of 2.5 kg per sq.cm ), pipelines and drip type nozzles. The amount of water dripping from the nozzle can be regulated to meet the plant requirement. This method is well suited for arid regions and high value crops (fertigation) is now being used to irrigate orchard crops.

Irrigation, sprinkler

In this practice, water is sprayed into the air through small nozzles and allowed to fall on the ground at a rate lower than the soil infiltration rate resulting in the use of a very small quantity of water to irrigate a large area. This method is particularly suited to sandy soils with a high infiltration rate, and areas with sloppy topography. The limitations of the sprinkle system is high installation cost.