Abstract

                                In Malabar, rice is cultivated on three classes of lands, those that lie irregularly along the ridges and slopes of low hills where dry paddy is raised; the terraced level type of lands that skirt the lower slopes where a single crop of swamp paddy is grown and the flat valleys that form the typical wetland paddy areas where two or three crops are raised in a year. The majority of the soils in Malabar are red loams of lateritic origin with varying proportions of clay and coarse sand. They are generally poor and are subject to constant depletion of finer fractions of the soil and soluble plant foods in the torrential rains during the South-West monsoon period, when 60-80 inches of rain are received within two months, june and july.

Key words :