Tuesday, July 10, 2018

Monsoon Break after onset in Bundelkhand and kharif crop sowing


Drought is recurring feature in Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh. It was noted that this region out of 5 year 3 year is generally drought year. Micro level drought analyses of past two decades indicate that frequency of occurrence of terminal and early season drought has increased. The frequent monsoon breaks of 4 to 10 days just after onset; creates a moisture stress accomplice with high soil temperature at 10 cm (> 35°C); which severely affects the soybean crop in its establishment stage.  This feature is monsoon delayed the sowing of kharif crops in this region and generally large number of farmers start their sowing after first week of July. Thus they lose the 15 to 20 days of crop /rainy season and again after 20 August monsoon break starts, and number of days above of air temperature above 35°C increases which finally affects the seed development. Thus the farmers have only 50-60 day of crop growing season in this region during kharif season. Till now under rainfed conditions no any soybean cultivar is available, which have maturity period of 60-70 days.  The trend of decreasing number of rainy days also is remarkable, the rainy days has decreased from 50 days up to 35-40 days. Thus the soybean production in Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh is in full grip of the gamble of monsoon and crop cultivation under rainfed condition is a risky business for farmers. 
This year of kharif 2018; the same situation is prevailing and farmers are waiting for heavy and widespread rainfall (> 60mm/day). Many farmers have sown their crops but still many farmers waiting for fairly widespread medium to heavy rainfall spell for the crop sowing. Today soil temperature at 10 cm depth at 11.30 AM is 36.3°C with partly cloudy sky. Widespread rainfall spell will be expected after 24-36 hours, hope this will continue for 2-3 days and farmers may be able to sow their crops during this week end. 

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