Agriculture of Rajasthan: Crops, Zones and the State's Standing

Agriculture and allied sectors are a quarter of Rajasthan's economy, and inside that quarter the animals now outweigh the crops. Livestock contributes 49.35 per cent of agricultural Gross Value Added against the crop sector's 42.61 per cent. A chapter on agriculture that only counts grain is describing the smaller half.

One habit protects almost every mark in this chapter. Every production figure and every national share moves with the year, and RPSC writes the year into the stem when it asks. In 2024 the commission asked Rajasthan's share of India's bajra in 2021-22 and keyed 38.98 per cent. The current Economic Review gives 41.34 per cent for 2023-24. Both are right for their years, and a candidate carrying one number without its year will lose to whichever the paper picked.

1. What agriculture is worth, and which half of it is growing

GovtSource: Government of Rajasthan, Economic Review 2025-26, "Transforming Agri-Food Systems", read directly. 2025-26 figures are Advance Estimates, 2024-25 are First Revised and 2023-24 are Second Revised, which the Review states in its own note. The four sectors inside "agriculture and allied" are crops, livestock, fishing, and forestry and logging.

Now the split inside that quarter, which is the fact worth carrying.

GovtSource: Economic Review 2025-26, figure 1.3 for the shares and the sectoral growth rates for 2025-26, at constant prices for growth and current prices for shares.

Read the two columns together and the year explains itself. The crop sector shrank by 5.01 per cent and livestock grew by 5.20 per cent, and because livestock is the larger share, the whole aggregate still managed +0.22 per cent. Livestock carried agriculture in 2025-26. The livestock chapter is where that half is worked; the point here is that it is the half, not an appendix to the crops.

And note the long trend in the first table. Agriculture's share of the state economy fell from 28.56 per cent in 2011-12 to 25.74 per cent in 2025-26. That is structural change, not a bad year — the other sectors grew faster — and it is the ordinary shape of a developing economy rather than a sign of agricultural failure.

1A. Who farms it: the holdings, and how they are splitting

Rajasthan's farms are large by Indian standards and getting smaller fast, and the Agricultural Census figures are the ones RPSC sets because they are stable between censuses.

GovtSource: Economic Review 2025-26, "Operational Land Holdings" and Table 1.1, Agriculture Census 2015-16, read directly. The Agricultural Census is the source, not the Review, and 2015-16 is the latest census edition the Review carries — these figures are a decade old and will not move until a newer census is published.

The distribution by size, and the direction it is moving.

GovtSource: Economic Review 2025-26, Table 1.1, read directly. The Review draws the inference itself: the rise in marginal and small holdings against the fall in large ones "indicates that there is an increase in land fragmentation probably attributable to the splitting of joint families."

Three readings, and the third is the one worth an answer.

Every class grew in number except the large, and the large lost more area than number. Fragmentation is not a metaphor here, it is arithmetic: more holdings across less land.

Sixty-two per cent of Rajasthan's holdings are marginal or small. That is the constituency every scheme in this chapter is aimed at.

And the fastest-growing category is not a size, it is a gender. Female-held holdings rose 41.94 per cent against an overall 11.14 per cent, and the area they hold rose 24.44 per cent while the state's total holding area fell. Women are the only group gaining land in this table, and that is a Mains point that no ranking of crops will give you.

Where Rajasthan sits in India's own zoning

The ten zones in the next section are the state's own scheme. India has a separate national one, and RPSC can ask either.

GovtSource: ICAR–Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute, Table 1.2, "Agro-climatic regions/zones in India", read directly; its own source line reads "Planning Commission (Khanna, 1989) has identified 15 resource development regions in the country, 14 in the main land and remaining one in the islands of Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea."

A correction to a claim in wide circulation, and this one is checkable in a single table. Preparation material states that Rajasthan falls in national zones 6, 8, 9 and 14. It does not fall in Zone IX. The ICAR table gives Zone IX, the Western plateau and hills region, as Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, with no Rajasthan entry. Rajasthan is in three national zones, not four, and the fourth is the one to strike.

2. The ten agro-climatic zones, and what each grows

This is the most examinable table in the chapter, and it has an unusual virtue: the Economic Review states it on the current forty-one-district map. It names Phalodi, Balotra, Deedwana-Kuchaman, Khairthal-Tijara, Kotputli-Behror, Beawar, Deeg and Salumber — all created in 2023 — so no correction for the reorganisation is needed here.

GovtSource: Economic Review 2025-26, Table 1.2, "Agro-Climatic Zones of Rajasthan", read directly and reproduced in full. The Review's own spellings are Sriganganagar, Deedwana-Kuchaman, Karoli, Rajasamand, Salumber and Soyabean; the forms in general use are given above and the differences are spelling only. The zone codes I-A to V are the Review's. The zones are defined on climate, soil type, topography and cropping pattern together — see the climate and soil chapters.

Four readings of that table are worth more than memorising it whole.

The zone numbering runs dry to wet, west to east. I-A is the arid west and V is the humid south-east. A candidate who fixes that direction can place any zone code roughly without recalling its districts.

Bajra is in six of the ten zones and guar in five. They are the crops that define the state, and they are why Rajasthan leads the country in both.

Paddy appears exactly once, in Zone IV-B — Banswara, Dungarpur, Pratapgarh, Salumber. Rice is not a Rajasthan crop except in the humid southern pocket, and an option putting paddy in the west is wrong on the state's own zoning.

Two zones are split by tehsil, not by district, and both splits are set: Churu is divided between I-C and II-A, and Sirohi between II-B and IV-A, with Pindwara and Abu Road going to the sub-humid south. Beawar is likewise split between II-B and III-A. A zone question that names a tehsil rather than a district is testing exactly this.

2A. The three seasons, and the varieties RPSC has actually keyed

Source: the standard three-season division as the state's preparation literature and the Economic Review's own kharif/rabi tables use it. The Review's own definition of the oilseed groups is in section 3: kharif oilseeds are groundnut, sesamum, soyabean and castor; rabi oilseeds are rape and mustard, taramira and linseed.

Note that Zaid is a third season and carries no field crop. It is melons and green vegetables between the rabi harvest and the kharif sowing, and a question offering a cereal as a zaid crop is wrong on that alone.

RPSC has set crop varieties once, and the answer is on record.

Source: RAS 2023 Prelims, Q13, with RPSC's own key, worked on the Geography PYQ page. The recoverable clue is the prefix: the state's bajra hybrids carry RCB and RHB, and Mahi names come from the Agricultural Research Centre at Banswara, on the Mahi.

That naming convention is worth more than the single pair. Mahi Kanchan and Mahi Sugandha are both Banswara releases — the first a maize hybrid, the second a rice variety — so the "Mahi" prefix identifies the station, not the crop, and an option pairing two Mahi varieties with the same crop is exploiting exactly that.

3. Area and production, with the estimate stage attached

GovtSource: Economic Review 2025-26, Table 1.3, read directly. Cotton production is in lakh bales of 170 kg each, not lakh tonnes. The 2025-26 column is Advance Estimates and the 2024-25 column is Final — the Review labels them so, and the two are not the same kind of number. Kharif oilseeds are groundnut, sesamum, soyabean and castor; rabi oilseeds are rape and mustard, taramira and linseed, as the Review defines them.

The shape of 2025-26 is one sentence: the kharif failed and the rabi held.

GovtSource: Economic Review 2025-26, the percentage changes as the Review itself computes and states them in its text.

Tie that to the season the climate chapter records. 2026's monsoon was forecast at 90 per cent of the long period average and arrived in Rajasthan about a week late. A kharif crop down more than a fifth while the irrigated rabi loses half a per cent is what a weak monsoon looks like in a production table — the rain-fed season takes the loss and the irrigated season does not. That is a Mains paragraph, not a Prelims fact.

And note the two crops that rose against the trend. Pulses and oilseeds both grew, and rabi pulses grew by more than a fifth. A bad grain year is not a bad agricultural year for every crop, and an answer that generalises from the food-grain line is overreaching.

4. Where Rajasthan stands nationally, with its share of each crop

This is the table RPSC draws percentage questions from. The Economic Review reproduces it from the Government of India's own statistics, not from state data, which is what makes the rankings quotable.

GovtSource: Economic Review 2025-26, Table 1.5, whose own source line reads "Agriculture Statistics At a Glance 2024, DoA&FW, MoA&FW, Government of India". The Review states the year of the comparison as 2023-24. The ranks are therefore the Union agriculture ministry's, not the state's own claim about itself, which is the right way round for a national ranking.

Guar is the number to carry above all others. Rajasthan produces 88.80 per cent of India's guar — not a plurality but nearly nine-tenths of the crop. No other state comes close in any crop on this page. It grows in five of the ten agro-climatic zones and it is the one crop for which Rajasthan is effectively the national supply.

Five firsts, one second, three thirds. First in guar, rapeseed and mustard, bajra, total oilseeds and coarse cereals; second in groundnut; third in gram, total pulses and soyabean. Notice the pattern: Rajasthan leads in the dry crops and trails in the wet ones. The firsts are millets, oilseeds and a desert legume; the thirds are pulses and soyabean, where Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra lead.

Now the trap this table sets, and it is the one RPSC has already sprung.

In RAS 2024 the commission asked for Rajasthan's bajra share in 2021-22 and keyed 38.98 per cent. This table gives 41.34 per cent for 2023-24. Both are correct. A share is a fact about a year, and the stem will tell you which year it wants. Learn the rank, which is stable, and treat the percentage as something to read off the stem's year rather than to recall cold.

5. Productivity, which is where the state does less well

GovtSource: Economic Review 2025-26, Table 1.4, read directly. The 2021-22 column is omitted here for width only and reads: cereals 2,093, pulses 628, food grains 1,486, oilseeds 1,484, guar seed 419, cotton 558, sugarcane 75,852.

Read this table against section 4 and the state's real position appears. Rajasthan is first in the country in five crops by production and its yields are modest. It leads on area, not on yield — a very large state farming a very large number of hectares at low productivity per hectare. That is the honest one-line description of Rajasthan's agriculture, and it is a better Mains opening than any ranking.

2024-25 was a good productivity year across the board, with food grains at 1,940 kg/ha against 1,628 the year before. Cotton is the exception that is not recovering: 675 in 2020-21 down to 484 in 2024-25, still below where it began.

6. Horticulture, and a series that jumps

GovtSource: Economic Review 2025-26, Table 1.6, read directly. The spice series in that table is volatile and the Review does not explain it: area falls from 9,22,616 ha in 2022-23 to 6,84,449 in 2023-24 and then doubles to 13,64,822 in 2024-25, with production moving 9,33,317 → 3,79,720 → 14,69,559 MT. The 2024-25 row is quoted here as printed; the swing is flagged rather than smoothed, and no growth rate is computed across it.

Spices are the largest horticultural area in the state by a wide margin — more than four times fruits and vegetables combined — and the lowest yielding per hectare, at about a fourteenth of the fruit yield. That is the nature of the crop rather than a failing: cumin and coriander are low-tonnage, high-value crops, and area is the wrong measure of their worth.

7. One crop per district: the Panch Gaurav list

The state has named a "Panch Gaurav" — five prides — for each of the forty-one districts, and one of the five is a crop. It is a ready-made district-to-crop pairing set published by the state, on the current 41-district map, which is exactly the form RPSC sets. Read "current" strictly: the state had 33 districts until August 2023, 50 until 28 December 2024 and 41 since. This list names none of the nine districts abolished in that cull, which is one way of confirming it is on the live map rather than the interim one.

GovtSource: Economic Review 2025-26, Executive Summary, Table II, "List of Districtwise identified Panch Gaurav", read directly and reproduced in full for the crop column. The other four columns of the same table are a botanical species, a product, a tourist destination and a sport for each district; the tourist destinations are worked in the tourism chapter. This is an official designation under a state initiative, not a statement that the named crop is the district's largest by area or value, and it should be quoted as the Panch Gaurav crop rather than as the district's leading crop.

Read the repeats, because they are where a matching question gets its distractors. Onion appears for four districts — Alwar, Khairthal-Tijara, Deedwana-Kuchaman and Sikar. Mustard for three — Jhunjhunu, Deeg and Tonk. Cumin for two — Jodhpur and Phalodi, which were one district until 2023. Custard apple for three, mango for two, pomegranate for two, kinnow for two, fennel for two, orange for two. A crop does not identify a district uniquely; a district identifies a crop uniquely, so the question can only run in one direction safely.

And note the ones that are unique and unusual, because those are the memorable pairings: Barmer–isabgol, Churu–aloevera, Bharatpur–honey, Jaisalmer–dates, Pratapgarh–kalonji, Pali–mehandi, Kota–coriander, Baran–garlic, Bikaner–moth, Jaipur–amla.

8. Nowadays — what changed in 2026

Covering 1 January to 30 August 2026. Updated every month until Prelims and Mains.

The pulses mission was replaced by a bigger one

From Rabi 2025-26 the Government of India merged the National Food Security and Nutrition Mission for Pulses into a new centrally sponsored scheme, the "Mission for Aatmanirbharta in Pulses". Its stated objects are a special focus on tur, urad and masoor, climate-resilient seed, more area under pulses, post-harvest storage, 100 per cent procurement of tur, urad and masoor by NCCF and NAFED, procurement of other pulses under the Price Support Scheme within PM-AASHA, and raising protein content.

GovtSource: Economic Review 2025-26, "Major Initiatives for Agricultural Improvement", read directly.

Set that against section 3 and the timing is striking. Rabi pulses in Rajasthan grew 22.34 per cent in the same year the pulses mission was replaced. The two are not shown to be connected by anything in the Review, and a single season cannot establish that a scheme worked. Note the coincidence; do not assert the cause.

Where the missions reach, district by district

From 2025-26 the wheat component of the NFSNM covers eighteen districts — Ajmer, Beawar, Dausa, Jaipur, Jhunjhunu, Nagaur, Sikar, Deeg, Karauli, Sawai Madhopur, Bikaner, Jodhpur, Pali, Banswara, Dungarpur, Pratapgarh, Udaipur and Bhilwara — while the pulses component covers all forty-one.

GovtSource: Economic Review 2025-26, same section, read directly. Spending under NFSNM for wheat, pulses, coarse cereals, nutritional cereals and commercial crops was ₹136.63 crore in 2025-26 up to December, a nine-month figure. The National Mission on Edible Oil–Oilseed spent ₹105.73 crore against a ₹125.00 crore provision in the same period, on a 60:40 centre-state pattern.

A spice conclave, and an app

On 8 September 2025 the state held the one-day "Rajasthan Masala Conclave 2025" at Birla Auditorium, Jaipur, chaired by the Chief Minister and bringing together spice farmers, traders and exporters. The Rajasthan State Agricultural Marketing Board launched the Raj Spice App at the conclave, and about 4,000 traders had registered on it by the Review's reporting date.

GovtSource: Economic Review 2025-26, marketing section, read directly. This falls just before the 2026 window and is carried because it is the most recent named event in the state's spice trade and because spices are the state's largest horticultural area.

Bt cotton hybrids cleared for Kharif 2026

The state government has approved the sale of Bt cotton hybrid seed for the Kharif 2026 season, on the recommendations of the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change and the Standing Committee on Bt Cotton, with 34 approved seed companies permitted to supply across the state's agro-climatic zones.

UnverifiedSource: reported consistently in the state press in 2026 and repeated in preparation material, but no Government of Rajasthan order or agriculture department notification for the Kharif 2026 approval was reached for this chapter. The figure of 34 companies and the GEAC route are given as reported, not as sourced, and the item is carried because cotton is a named crop of Zone I-B and the approval governs the season now under way.

What has not changed

The ten agro-climatic zones are unchanged — same ten, same codes, same district composition, already on the post-2023 map.

The national rankings are as at 2023-24 and come from Agricultural Statistics at a Glance 2024. No newer edition was used for this chapter, so every share on this page carries that year.

And the 2025-26 production figures are Advance Estimates. They will be revised. A figure quoted from this page as a final result would be wrong by the time the next Review is published, which is why the estimate stage is printed in every column heading.

What RPSC has actually asked

Five questions in the papers this site reproduces fall in agriculture and horticulture, and they are worked in full with RPSC's keys on the Geography PYQ page.

The pattern across five questions is not about crops at all. Two are about institutions, one about varieties, one about a tribal practice and one about a percentage. RPSC asks agriculture through its named things — centres, varieties, shares — rather than through descriptions of cropping. Learn the proper nouns.

Important for RAS

Prelims Focus

• Rajasthan is in three of India's 15 national agro-climatic regions — VI, VIII and XIV — not four. Zone XIV, the Western Dry Region, is Rajasthan alone; Zone IX is Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra
• Average operational holding 2.73 ha (2015-16), down from 3.07; 76.55 lakh holdings; marginal and small together are 62 per cent; large holdings are the only class shrinking
• Mahi Kanchan is maize, RCB 911 is bajra — RPSC's own 2023 key
• Zaid has no field crop — melons and green vegetables between rabi and kharif
• Livestock 49.35 per cent against crops 42.61 per cent of agricultural GVA. The animals are the larger half
• Agriculture is 25.74 per cent of state GVA in 2025-26, down from 28.56 per cent in 2011-12
• Guar: Rajasthan produces 88.80 per cent of India's crop. First also in rapeseed and mustard, bajra, total oilseeds and coarse cereals
• Second in groundnut behind Gujarat; third in gram, total pulses and soyabean behind Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra
• Bajra share: 38.98 per cent in 2021-22 (RPSC's key), 41.34 per cent in 2023-24 (the Review). Read the year in the stem
• Zone IV-B is the only paddy zone — Banswara, Dungarpur, Pratapgarh, Salumber
• Zone I-B, Sri Ganganagar and Hanumangarh, is the cotton-and-guar zone; Zone V, Kota-Baran-Bundi-Jhalawar, is soyabean; barley appears only in Zone III-B
• Churu is split between zones I-C and II-A, Sirohi between II-B and IV-A, Beawar between II-B and III-A — by tehsil
• Food grain production 2025-26 is 283.98 lakh tonnes, an Advance Estimate, down 8.28 per cent, with kharif down 21.61 and rabi down 0.49
• Cotton is measured in bales of 170 kg
• Spices occupy the largest horticultural area in the state

Interview and Mains Angles

• Livestock now contributes more to agricultural GVA than crops, and grew while crops shrank. What should that reorder in a state agriculture policy still written around grain?
• Rajasthan is first in the country in five crops and modest in yield. Is leadership by area a strength to build on or a weakness to correct?
• The kharif fell more than a fifth while the rabi held almost flat in a weak monsoon year. What does that gap say about the returns to irrigation in this state?
• Rajasthan supplies nearly nine-tenths of India's guar, a crop whose price has historically been set by an export market it does not control. What follows for the farmer?
• Spices take the largest horticultural area and yield least per hectare. Why is area the wrong measure of a crop's worth, and what is the right one?

Aggregator Watch

Unresolved claims from this box are collected, with what was checked, on the Caution for Readers page.

Practice

• Practice: Agriculture of Rajasthan — 45 questions built from this chapter: the ten zones and the national three, the crop shares with their years, the 2025-26 advance estimates and the Panch Gaurav crop, each with a worked "why not the others".
• Every RAS Prelims Geography question, 2013–2024 — all 78 official questions with RPSC's keys and worked explanations, including the five on agriculture and horticulture.

More in This Series

• Rajasthan: Location, Extent and Physiography
• Rajasthan's Climate: Characteristics, Regions and the Monsoon
• Soils of Rajasthan: Classification, Distribution and Soil Health
• Lakes, Traditional Water Harvesting and Irrigation
• Livestock and Dairy Development
• Natural Vegetation, Biodiversity and Conservation
• Caution for Readers — the claims across this site that are genuinely unsettled

Sources & Verification

Written on 30 August 2026. Every figure on this page is read from the Economic Review 2025-26 directly, and the national rankings are read from the table in which the Review reproduces the Union agriculture ministry's own comparison.

1. One document carries this chapter, and that is stated rather than disguised. The Economic Review 2025-26 supplies the GVA figures and sectoral shares, Table 1.2 for the agro-climatic zones, Table 1.3 for area and production, Table 1.4 for productivity, Table 1.5 for the national comparison, Table 1.6 for horticulture, Table II of the Executive Summary for the Panch Gaurav crops, and the scheme and initiative sections. Where a chapter rests on one source, the risk is that the source's errors become the page's errors, which is why the internal oddities below are printed rather than smoothed.

2. The national ranks are the Union government's, not the state's. Table 1.5 carries its own source line: "Agriculture Statistics At a Glance 2024, DoA&FW, MoA&FW, Government of India." A state document cannot settle its own national rank, and this one does not try to; it reproduces the central compilation and says so. The comparison year is 2023-24 and every share on this page carries it.

3. The estimate stage is part of every production figure. 2025-26 is Advance Estimates, 2024-25 is First Revised, 2023-24 is Second Revised, in the Review's own note. These are not the same kind of number and the page never mixes them in a single comparison without saying so.

4. Two internal oddities in the source are reported, not resolved. The spice series in Table 1.6 falls by a quarter and then doubles across three years with no explanation in the Review, so the 2024-25 row is quoted as printed and no growth rate is computed across the break. And the Review's district spellings differ from general usage — Sriganganagar, Deedwana-Kuchaman, Karoli, Rajasamand — which is spelling only and is noted under the zone table.

5. The Panch Gaurav crop is a designation, not a measurement. It is an official state list of one crop per district and it is reproduced in full, but it does not state that the named crop leads the district in area, production or value, and this page does not claim that it does. Coaching material that converts the list into a "largest producer" table is adding a claim the source does not make.

6. What a single-source chapter cannot do. No district-wise crop production table, no crop-wise procurement figure, no national spice ranking and no organic-farming area is asserted here, because the Review does not carry them and no departmental source for them was reached. Each is listed in Aggregator Watch above with what was checked.

Links were checked and resolving on 30 August 2026, each against its final URL rather than its first.