Jute

Mid-March into April, once pre-monsoon soil moisture allows. Sowing depends on the first useful pre-monsoon showers rather than a fixed calendar date — sowing into dry soil gives poor, patchy germination, while sowing too late compresses the vegetative window and pushes cutting into the wettest, most disease-prone weeks of the monsoon.

5–7 kg/ha for line sowing, or 7–8 kg/ha if broadcasting, which needs more seed to compensate for the uneven stand it gives. Tossa (Corchorus olitorius) seed is slightly finer than white jute (Corchorus capsularis) and needs marginally less at the same spacing.

₹5,925 per quintal for raw jute (TD-3 grade), for the Jute Marketing Season (JMS) 2026–27, as approved by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs — an increase of ₹275 per quintal over 2025–26's ₹5,650. MSP is revised every jute marketing season, so check the current notification before selling.

TD stands for Trade Description — jute's standard fibre-quality grading scale, running from the finest (TD-1) down through coarser grades, based on colour, strength, lustre and cleanliness. TD-3 is the benchmark mid-grade the government uses to set and announce MSP each season; better-retted fibre grades higher than TD-3 and fetches a premium above MSP, while poorly retted fibre grades lower and sells at a discount.

Retting is the controlled rotting of cut stalks in water that separates fibre from the woody core, and it is what actually determines the fibre's colour and grade — not anything done in the field. Clean, still water gives bright, golden, top-grade fibre; dirty, polluted or fast-flowing water gives dark, weak, low-grade fibre that sells at a steep discount, even from an otherwise well-grown crop. This is why growers deliberately set aside a clean pond, ditch or slow backwater for retting rather than using whatever water is nearest.

Usually 15–20 days, depending on water temperature — warmer water retts faster. Check periodically by peeling back the bark on a test stalk; retting is complete once the fibre separates cleanly from the woody core along the full stalk length. Pulling stalks out too early (under-retting) leaves fibre stuck to the core, and leaving them too long (over-retting) weakens and discolours the fibre — both cost grade and price.

Under-retted stalks give poor fibre extraction, with patches of bark that won't separate cleanly from the woody core, lowering the recovery percentage from each bundle. Over-retted stalks give fibre that has lost tensile strength and turned weak and discoloured. Both mistakes lower the final TD grade and the price the lot fetches, so testing a stalk periodically rather than retting on a fixed number of days is the safer approach.

When most plants reach the small-pod stage — flower buds just forming or small green pods just set — usually 100–120 days after sowing. This is a deliberate balance point: cutting later adds a little fibre weight but coarsens the fibre, and cutting earlier gives finer fibre but less of it.

Tossa (Corchorus olitorius) — varieties like JRO-524 (Navin), JRO-66 and JRO-8432 — is the dominant choice today: faster-growing, higher-yielding and finer-fibred, and suits most upland and mid-land fields. White jute (Corchorus capsularis) — varieties like JRC-321 and JRC-212 — is the older, hardier type and remains the better choice on low-lying land that stays wet or lightly flooded longer than tossa tolerates well.

20–25 quintals per hectare of fibre under normal management. Well-managed fields sown on time with a high-yielding variety, timely thinning and low-density spacing can reach 25–28 q/ha, per recent ICAR-CRIJAF trials on low-density sowing.

A widely used recommendation is around 60:30:30 kg/ha N:P₂O₅:K₂O, adjusted to your soil-test results. Apply full phosphorus and potash plus about half the nitrogen as a basal dose before sowing, roughly a quarter of the nitrogen at weeding-cum-thinning (20–25 days), and the rest at 35–40 days during peak vegetative growth.

Less than most kharif crops, since it is grown through the monsoon on the moisture-retentive Bengal delta. A light irrigation at sowing helps if the pre-monsoon showers were thin, and a supplementary irrigation during a dry spell in peak vegetative growth protects height gain — but once the monsoon sets in, rainfall usually covers the rest of the season.

This points to yellow mite (Polyphagotarsonemus latus), a microscopic pest that curls young leaves backward along the midrib and turns them coppery-bronze under a heavy population. Ordinary insecticides control mites poorly — use a recommended acaricide where infestation is heavy, and conserve natural predatory mites by avoiding unnecessary broad-spectrum sprays.

Look for blackish streaks near the stem base at the seedling stage, or buff-to-black lesions on leaves and petioles followed by dark, spreading nodal lesions on older plants — caused by Macrophomina phaseolina, the most damaging jute disease in India. There is no full in-season cure, so seed treatment, timely thinning to avoid overcrowding, and crop rotation on badly affected fields are the real defence.

Jute is covered under PMFBY (Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana) where it is in your state's notified crop list, with the farmer's premium capped at 2% of the sum insured as a kharif crop. PM-KISAN is not crop-specific — any eligible landholding farmer family qualifies. Check your state's seasonal notification and cut-off dates.

Most raw jute is sold in the open market to local traders or mills, where the price often runs above MSP in a good season. Below MSP, the Jute Corporation of India (JCI) is the central government's nominated agency for MSP procurement of raw jute, buying at registered centres in the major producing states. The live mandi price on this page is the most useful real-time signal for deciding when and where to sell.