Agronomy
How a field crop is actually grown — sowing, spacing, nutrients, water, and the sequence a field is put through in a year.
The discipline of the decisions a farmer makes anyway.
Agronomy is the management of field crops: which variety, sown when, at what seed rate and spacing, with what nutrients at which stage, under what water regime, and followed by what. Every one of those is a decision a farmer makes each season with or without the university, and the discipline exists to make the decision better rather than to introduce it.
In Madhesh the work centres on the rice–wheat system and what can be fitted around it: sowing dates that dodge the worst of the heat and the late rain, establishment methods for a wet or a delayed field, nutrient scheduling, weed management, and cropping systems that add a third crop to a year without wrecking the two that pay for it.
Sowing and establishment
Dates, seed rate, spacing and methods for wet or delayed fields.
Nutrient and water
Fertiliser scheduling by stage, and irrigation under a limited supply.
Weed management
Cultural, mechanical and chemical control, and herbicide resistance.
Cropping systems
Rice–wheat and what can be fitted around it across a year.