Summer Research Programme
The monsoon season — rice above all, with maize, jute and sugarcane, from June transplanting to the October harvest.
The season the province eats from.
The summer monsoon crop is the main one in Madhesh, and rice is most of it. The season's difficulty is water arriving in the wrong quantity at the wrong time — a late monsoon that delays transplanting, then a week of standing flood that drowns a field which has just recovered.
The programme works on that directly: submergence-tolerant rice varieties and how long they actually hold; nursery and transplanting dates against monsoon onset; weed control in direct-seeded rice; and drainage on the heavy soils where water sits. Maize, jute and sugarcane trials run alongside for the farms that do not grow rice on all their land.
Rice
Variety trials, submergence tolerance and transplanting date against monsoon onset.
Water & drainage
Flood, waterlogging and drainage on the heavy soils of the Terai.
Pest surveillance
Stem borer, leaf folder and disease pressure through the wet months.
Maize, jute & sugarcane
The other monsoon crops of the province and their place in the rotation.