Law of diminishing returns begins to operate when –
Marginal product begins to fall
The law of diminishing returns, also referred to as the law of diminishing marginal returns, states that in a production process, as one input variable is increased, there will be a point at which the marginal per unit output will start to decrease, holding all other factors constant. In other words, keeping all other factors constant, the additional output gained by another one unit increase of the input variable will eventually be smaller than the additional output gained by the previous increase in input variable. At that point, the diminishing marginal returns take effect.
In other words the law of diminishing returns states that in all productive processes, adding more of one factor of production, while holding all others constant will at some point yield lower incremental per-unit returns. The law of diminishing returns does not imply that adding more of a factor will decrease the total production, a condition known as negative returns, though in fact this is common.