Journal of FARM SCIENCES, Vol 28, No 5 (2015)

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Sensitivity of rice-wheat system yields to climate change : Evidence from Haryana

Sendhil R., Raj Pal Meena, Thimmappa K., Randhir Singh, Indu Sharma

Abstract


The present study is an attempt to find the long-run trend in the weather parameters for rice (Kharif) and wheat (Rabi) growing season in Karnal district of Haryana and then analysing the sensitivity of crop yield towards the climate change. Evidence of significant long-run trend in weather variables has been noticed during the rice and wheat growing seasons. Post stepwise regression for reducing the number of weekly weather variables as well as eliminating the effect of multicollinearity, the study identifies that rice yields are positively influenced by minimum temperature (week 13), evapo-transpiration (week 15) and wind speed (week 10); and wheat yields are sensitive to the maximum temperature (week 1), evapo-transpiration (week 1) and sunshine (week 6). Volatility in weather parameters during the ripening stage reduces the rice yield and for wheat it is during the crown root initiation and late tillering stage. The study recommends that future research on rice and wheat should focus on the developing genotypes resilient to climate change. However, the study has been fraught with a lack of information on the atmospheric concentration of CO2 and its interactive effect on crop yield. Hence, it is recommended that a more comprehensive analysis would improve the understanding of the impact of climate change on rice-wheat yields

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