Wheat Sowing Time and Seed Rate per Acre: Best Date by Zone and State, Varieties, Seed Treatment and Basal Dose

The best time to sow irrigated wheat is 1 to 15 November in Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Karnataka, and 10 to 20 November in eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat (ICAR zone dates). Use about 40 kg seed per acre (100 kg per hectare) for timely sowing and about 50 kg per acre (125 kg per hectare) for late sown or rainfed wheat. Late sown wheat yields less: 44.5 against 54.3 q/ha in NWPZ in ICAR-IIWBR trial data. Treat seed against smut and termite, sow 4 to 6 cm deep, and drill DAP and potash with the seed.

The best time to sow irrigated wheat is the first fortnight of November in Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Karnataka, and 10 to 20 November in eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. Sowing after 25 November is treated as late sowing in the northern plains. These are the ICAR wheat zone dates.

Source: ICAR pocket guide Wheat Cultivation in India (2015). A 2025 paper from ICAR-IIWBR, Karnal, describes the same pattern: timely sown wheat is planted in the first fortnight of November and late sown wheat 25 to 30 days after that (Journal of Cereal Research, 2025).

Two points matter in practice. First, a few long-duration varieties in Punjab can start earlier, from the fourth week of October (see the variety section). Second, rainfed wheat follows stored soil moisture, not the calendar, so a farmer on rainfed land should sow as soon as the topsoil is moist enough for germination, within the zone window. If your wheat follows paddy, the real issue is usually a late rice harvest, which is covered in the field preparation section below.

ICAR divides India into six wheat zones, and sowing dates, varieties and fertilizer doses are recommended zone by zone, not state by state. Find your district's zone first, then read the dates for that zone. Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh are split between two zones.

Source: ICAR, Wheat Cultivation in India, Table 1. The same guide records that the Indo-Gangetic plains, which means NWPZ and NEPZ together, form the main wheat tract, followed by the Central and Peninsular zones. Your state agricultural university may fine-tune dates and varieties inside a zone, so use its Rabi package of practices as the final word.

State sowing time follows the zone: 1 to 15 November in Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Karnataka; 10 to 20 November in eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. Punjab's own university and Himachal's agriculture department publish their own windows, shown below.

Sources: PAU Package of Practices Rabi 2025-26, ICAR pocket guide and the Himachal Pradesh Department of Agriculture tillage and sowing page. Checked sources do not show a separate sowing-date page from the Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra or Karnataka agriculture universities that loaded cleanly, so those rows use the ICAR zone dates. For Bihar, trials by CIMMYT, Bihar Agricultural University and ICAR institutes point the same way: the authors advise sowing in the second week of November (details in the yield-loss section).

Use 100 kg seed per hectare, about 40 kg per acre, for timely sown irrigated wheat. For late sown or rainfed wheat, ICAR advises 125 kg per hectare, about 50 kg per acre. Punjab Agricultural University recommends 45 kg per acre for PBW 869 and Unnat PBW 550 and 40 kg for its other varieties.

Acre figures marked converted are arithmetic here at 1 hectare = 2.471 acres, rounded. Bold grain and poor germination both change how many plants you get from the same weight of seed, so a germination test before sowing is worth the few days it takes.

Note: The ICAR and PAU rates above are for line sowing with a seed drill. Broadcasting, bed planting and residue seeders each have their own rate, shown in the next section.

Seed rate (kg per hectare) = plants wanted per square metre x 1,000-grain weight in grams / (100 x germination as a fraction). One kilogram of wheat holds roughly 23,000 to 27,000 seeds, because ICAR-IIWBR trial varieties weigh 36.4 to 43.8 g per 1,000 grains. At 40 kg per acre that is about 0.9 to 1.1 million seeds per acre.

The formula is standard seed-rate arithmetic, not a line from an ICAR or PAU publication. The grain weights come from the ICAR-IIWBR paper, which lists thousand-grain weight by zone for timely and late sown released varieties. Seeds per kg is 1,000,000 divided by the 1,000-grain weight in grams.

Back-check with the ICAR rate: 100 kg per hectare at 40 g per 1,000 grains and 90 percent germination works out to about 225 established plants per square metre by the formula (100 x 100 x 0.90 / 40). The 40 g and 90 percent are example values for the check, not recommendations. Use the printed zone rate for planning, and use the formula only to adjust for a seed lot whose grain weight or germination is clearly different. Weigh 1,000 grains from your own lot and run a germination test before you decide.

Late sown wheat needs more seed because it tillers less; ICAR advises 125 kg per hectare. Sowing method also changes the rate. PAU asks for 5 kg more per acre with a Happy Seeder, 30 kg per acre on raised beds, and 45 kg per acre for surface seeding in combine-harvested paddy fields.

For late sowing PAU also advises 15 cm row spacing instead of the normal 15 to 20 cm, and says soaked seed hastens emergence: soak for 4 to 6 hours, spread in a thin layer, and sow after 24 hours with the drill adjusted for the swollen seed. A Haryana (CCS HAU) trial and others have also looked at higher seed rates under late sowing, but full texts were not checked, so no rate from them is printed here. The Tribune report on PAU January sowing is at this link.

Late sowing costs yield in every zone. In ICAR-IIWBR's 2000 to 2023 trial data, late sown wheat gave 44.5 q/ha against 54.3 q/ha for timely sown wheat in NWPZ, and 36.8 against 43.4 in NEPZ. PAU estimates a one-week delay from the optimum costs about 150 kg of grain per acre.

Source: Table 1 of the ICAR-IIWBR paper in the Journal of Cereal Research (2025), which covers released bread wheat varieties tested by the All India Coordinated Research Programme on Wheat and Barley. The text of that paper quotes loss percentages that are slightly different from those you get by dividing the table values (it gives for example 18.1 percent for NWPZ), so use the table yields, not a single percentage. The table averages different varieties in the two groups, so it shows the combined effect of date and variety. The reason is simple: late sown wheat spends fewer days growing, and the paper's table shows the crop heading earlier and filling grain in fewer days.

For Bihar, a 2025 Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems paper by CIMMYT, Bihar Agricultural University, ICAR institutes and KVKs reports 220 demonstrations in 8 districts in the 2019-20 rabi season. Yield was highest at 4.96 t/ha for sowing on 13 November and lowest at 2.14 t/ha for sowing on 31 December. The authors give an average loss of about 1.18 percent per day of delay. The paper is internally inconsistent on the ideal window (13 to 30 November in the abstract, 13 to 20 November in the conclusions, 10 to 20 November in the discussion), so use the message that holds in all three: sow in the second week of November, ideally with a Happy Seeder.

CSISA, a CIMMYT-led programme working with KVKs, also reported in 2022 that timely sown varieties gave higher grain yield than late sown varieties in Bihar field events, and that early sowing helped the crop avoid terminal heat stress (CSISA Bihar public harvest report).

Yes, but only with the right variety. Punjab Agricultural University lists varieties for sowing from the 4th week of October, and others for the 4th week of November to the 4th week of December. PBW 757 is its variety for the first fortnight of January. PAU assigns each variety to its own sowing window.

Source: PAU Package of Practices, Rabi 2025-26. The ICAR pocket guide explains why dates matter: its advice is to follow timely planting to avoid yield losses from heat around maturity. If your sowing is delayed by a late rice harvest, switch to a variety released for the late window of your zone, not the same variety you planned for November.

Early sowing has its own risk. PAU lets long-duration varieties start from the fourth week of October so that they do not face high temperature near maturity, but it calls the first fortnight of November the optimum time. In a warm October, tillering and crop duration both change, so use the early window only for varieties your university has listed for it.

Choose a variety released for your zone and your sowing date, not the one a neighbour grew. PAU's Punjab list is above. For other zones, ICAR advises growing recommended varieties for your area and not varieties from other zones, to limit disease risk, so use your state university's current list.

The ICAR pocket guide groups varieties by zone and condition: timely sown irrigated, late sown irrigated and rainfed or restricted irrigation. That grouping is the useful part, because a variety bred for late sowing is shorter in duration. The variety table in that 2015 guide is dated, so it is not reproduced here. Releases change every few years. The current Rabi variety list is published by ICAR-IIWBR, Karnal, and the AICRP on Wheat and Barley annual report; ask your KVK for the notified list for your district before booking seed.

• Timely sown, irrigated: a long-duration variety that uses the full November to March season.
• Late sown, irrigated: a short-duration variety released for late sowing; sowing a timely variety late often loses more yield (see yield table).
• Rainfed or restricted irrigation: a variety released for that condition, sown early enough to use stored moisture.
• Karnal bunt-prone or export seed crop: ICAR names PBW 502, PDW 233 and WH 896 for NWPZ in its 2015 guide; check current recommendations.

Buy certified or truthfully labelled seed with a lot number and keep the bill. Our guide to spotting fake agri-inputs lists the basic checks to apply to seed bags and treatments too.

ICAR-IIWBR, Karnal lists its wheat varieties by zone and sowing condition: NWPZ, NEPZ, Central Zone and Peninsular Zone, each split into early, timely or late sowing and restricted irrigation. The table below is a sample of varieties named on that official list, not a recommendation. Confirm the variety and seed availability with your state seed agency or KVK.

The ICAR-IIWBR list does not include a separate Southern Hills Zone row or a rainfed-only row, so those are not shown. For hill and rainfed areas use the list from your state agricultural university or KVK. Yields are research-trial figures in quintals per hectare (1 q/ha is about 0.4 q per acre) and farm yields differ.

Sources, all checked 12 Nov 2026: ICAR-IIWBR, varieties under seed production programme 2024-25 (zone, sowing condition, year of release); ICAR-IIWBR extension folders on the varieties page for DBW 222 (Extension Bulletin 80), DBW 303 (83), DBW 327 (85), DBW 332 (86), DBW 370, 371 and 372 (91 and 93), DBW 316 (92) and DDW 55 (95).

Treat seed one or two days before sowing against loose smut and flag smut and, where termites are a problem, against termites. ICAR lists tebuconazole 1.0 g per kg seed, carboxin (Vitavax) 2.0 g per kg seed, or a mix of Trichoderma viride 4 g per kg with carboxin 1.25 g per kg for an integrated option.

Sources: ICAR pocket guide and PAU package. ICAR also notes that seed treatment improves germination and that sowing untreated seed can lead to heavy smut losses. Doses differ between publications because they list different brands and strengths, so follow the label and your university advisory. For seed dressing, Katyayani lists a tebuconazole 2 DS seed treatment with wheat loose smut and flag smut on the page, a carbendazim 50 WP fungicide that lists wheat smut seed treatment, and a thiamethoxam 30 FS seed treatment that lists wheat termite. The wider range is in the wheat smut fungicides and wheat termite insecticides collections. The method of placing a fungicide or insecticide on a seed or soil is explained in fungicide application methods.

Wear gloves, dry the treated seed in shade and never use leftover treated seed as food or feed. A seed treatment drum gives even coating; ICAR recommends one for treatment.

Prepare a level, moist seedbed, and sow the seed and fertilizer together with a drill. After combine-harvested paddy, PAU advises sowing with a Happy Seeder, Super Seeder or Smart Seeder into standing stubble instead of burning straw. After cotton, a Super Seeder can sow wheat while incorporating the residue in one pass.

• After paddy, straw retained: chop straw with a straw chopper-cum-spreader and mix it in, or sow with Happy Seeder, Super Seeder or PAU Smart Seeder (PAU). Give the last irrigation to paddy two weeks before harvest to hold moisture for sowing.
• After paddy, straw removed: if the soil is moist, plough straight away; if dry, give a pre-sowing irrigation (rauni), then disc harrow once, plank, and cultivate again (PAU).
• After maize and cotton: PAU advises sowing wheat with a Super Seeder under maize residue, and in cotton stalks after the final boll picking.
• Pre-sowing irrigation: PAU advises sowing after a heavy pre-sowing irrigation (10 cm), except after rice. If wheat sowing may be delayed by late rice harvest, give the pre-sowing irrigation to the standing rice 5 to 10 days before harvest (not where a combine is used). This advances wheat sowing by about a week.
• Zero tillage: PAU says it saves diesel and time, reduces Phalaris minor and ensures timely sowing; after three continuous years under zero tillage, plough once to deal with perennial weeds or rodents.

A PAU note for Happy Seeder sowing: use 5 kg more seed per acre, drill 55 kg DAP per acre at sowing, and follow the rodent control chapter. The ICAR guide adds that sowing is to be done by drilling seed and fertilizer, with seed and fertilizer pipes checked for blockage.

Sow wheat 4 to 6 cm deep with 15 to 20 cm between rows, according to PAU. The Himachal Pradesh Department of Agriculture advises 22 cm row spacing and not more than 5 cm depth. Late sown wheat is sown closer, with 15 cm rows in PAU's advice.

Source: PAU package and HP agriculture department page. Calibrate the drill before use (PAU). Seed placed too deep emerges weakly and seed placed too shallow dries out, so keep the depth even by sowing into moisture.

ICAR recommends 150:60:40 kg N:P2O5:K2O per hectare for timely irrigated wheat in NWPZ and NEPZ, with one-third of the nitrogen and all phosphorus and potash at sowing. That is about 53 kg DAP, 23 kg urea and 27 kg muriate of potash per acre at sowing, and two urea top dressings of 44 kg per acre.

Nutrient doses are from the ICAR pocket guide. The per-acre product quantities are calculation here at 1 hectare = 2.471 acres, DAP 18:46:0, urea 46 percent N and MOP 60 percent K2O, counting the nitrogen that DAP supplies. Treat them as a planning guide and adjust them to your Soil Health Card and state advice.

PAU's recommendation for Punjab on medium-fertile soil is 55 kg DAP, 110 kg neem-coated urea and no potash in the normal case, with 20 kg muriate of potash on soils testing low in potassium. Drill all DAP at sowing; with DAP no urea is needed at sowing. If phosphorus comes from single superphosphate, drill 155 kg SSP and add 20 kg urea at sowing. Broadcast 45 kg urea for timely sown wheat, and 35 kg for wheat sown after mid-December, before each of the first and second irrigation. See also DAP alternatives if DAP is short.

Zinc: ICAR advises 25 kg zinc sulphate per hectare once a year, or 10 kg per hectare to each crop, where deficiency is common, and a 0.5 percent zinc sulphate foliar spray if symptoms show. If the crop turns yellow after the first irrigation, read why wheat turns yellow before adding more urea. Katyayani sells a wheat soil kit of biofertilizers and biofungicides whose page is written for wheat; see also the full wheat crop products, bio fungicides and fertilizers collections.

Give a light first irrigation about 3 weeks after sowing for October-sown wheat and 4 weeks after sowing for wheat sown later, according to PAU. Broadcast the first urea split just before it. ICAR names crown root initiation and flowering as the stages most sensitive to moisture stress.

PAU's notes: bring the first irrigation forward on light soils and delay it by a week on heavy paddy soils; irrigate timely sown wheat up to the end of March, and wheat sown after 5 December up to 10 April, depending on rainfall; do not irrigate on windy days to avoid lodging. For Happy Seeder wheat, apply urea immediately before the first and second irrigation. ICAR describes four to six irrigations as enough for wheat. The ICAR guide also notes that bed planting saves about 30 percent water. Detailed first-irrigation and top-dressing timing will be covered in a separate post; for yellowing after irrigation, see the post linked in the previous section.

For 100 acres of timely sown irrigated wheat in NWPZ at ICAR's 150:60:40 dose, plan about 4,000 kg seed, 5,300 kg DAP, 2,300 kg urea at sowing, 8,800 kg urea for the two top dressings and 2,700 kg muriate of potash. Dealers and FPOs can scale these numbers to their own area. These are arithmetic, not stock advice.

The seed and fertilizer rows use the ICAR rates above. Zinc sulphate follows ICAR's 10 kg per hectare to each crop, converted at 2.471 acres per hectare. Seed treatment inputs follow seed sold: the PAU and ICAR doses in the seed treatment section tell you how many grams of fungicide are needed per 100 kg of seed. A list of what retailers stock for the season is in agri input dealer stock list for rabi. Farmers who plan credit for these inputs can read about the Kisan Credit Card scheme.

The common mistakes are sowing late because rice straw delayed the field, using a timely variety on a late date, skipping seed treatment, putting seed too deep, and applying all urea at sowing. Each one has a documented cost in the sources above, listed below.

The dosage rows above lean on one source each; if your state publishes a different figure, use your state's. For crops that follow wheat or share the rabi window, see our guides to mustard sowing, chana sowing and barley, the rabi MSP rates, PMFBY rabi enrollment and how to read a Soil Health Card.

Conclusion

Wheat sowing works best when you fix the date by zone first, then match variety, seed rate, seed treatment and fertilizer to that date. In the northern plains sow in the first fortnight of November, in eastern and central India from 10 to 20 November, and treat anything after 25 November as late: sow a variety released for late sowing and raise the seed rate. Use 40 kg seed per acre for timely sowing and about 50 kg for late or rainfed sowing, treat the seed, drill fertilizer with the seed and adjust doses to your Soil Health Card. If your university's package differs from the zone figure, follow your university.