The Cropping System Research Centre (CSRC) is located at Nedumcaud, Karamana, 3.0 km south east of Thiruvananthapuram Central railway and bus stations. The station has an area of 7.65 ha of which 7.25 ha is double cropped wet land and 0.4 ha garden land. The centre, formerly known as the Model Agronomic Research Station, was established in 1955. New schemes and projects were started from 1968 onwards under the All India Co-ordinated Agro-nomic Research Project (AICARP) of the ICAR. From October, 1983 onwards, the station was upgraded as the HQ of the AICARP in Kerala.

Lead functions are rice-based cropping system and verification functions are agrotechniques (rice), integrated farming systems with rice/ fish/ poultry/ cattle. From 1986, a unit of All India Co-ordinated Agronomic project is functioning here.

The Centre produced several findings on cropping system research. Major findings are :

1. Farm yard manure has direct, residual and cumulativeeffect when used continuously in paddy fields.
2. Rice-rice-groundnut crop sequence gave the maximum net return per ha when compared with other crop sequences.
3. Advancing the planting date from the normal date of planting (in both the seasons) significantly increased the grain yield.
4. Raising of crops (sesamum, groundnut green manure, cowpea, green gram) during summer in paddy fields increased the yield of subsequent kharif crop.
5. Hand weeding is the best method of weed control compared to herbicides and combination of hand weeding and herbicides.
6. Phosphorus application can be skipped upto 4 years for rice. Application of N @ 80 kg/ha is optimum for medium duration rice.