Spring Research Programme
The short season between winter harvest and monsoon sowing — spring maize, chaite rice, mung bean and summer vegetables.
A season that only exists where there is water.
Spring is the Terai's third crop, and the one most dependent on irrigation: temperatures climb through March and April while rainfall stays low, so a spring crop is only worth sowing where a tubewell or canal can be relied on. Where it can, it is the difference between two crops a year and three.
The programme studies which crops repay the water they need, and how to use less of it: spring maize hybrids and their planting window, chaite rice against direct-seeded alternatives, short-duration mung bean as a nitrogen-fixing catch crop, and irrigation scheduling that meets the crop's demand without running the pump on habit.
Spring maize
Hybrid evaluation, planting window and heat stress at grain filling.
Chaite rice
Transplanted versus direct-seeded spring rice, and its true water cost.
Mung bean
Short-duration pulse between wheat and rice, and what it leaves in the soil.
Irrigation scheduling
Matching water application to crop demand rather than to routine.