Yearly and seasonal variations in rainfall quantity and distribution patterns are projected to change with climate change and are already being experienced globally, especially in large swath of dryland regions in India. In this context, developing new agronomic adaptation strategies which would help dryland crops cope with both low and high rainfall situations. Sunflower is one such dryland crop which is known to be drought tolerant, but its productivity greatly varies with the variability in rainfall patterns. In this direction a study was carried out on deep black soils at the Main Agricultural Research Station, University of Agricultural Sciences, Raichur, Karnataka for two years (2012 and 2013) to identify moisture conservation technique that would cope with both high and low rainfall situations. Rainfall between July and October, the most effective rainfall period for sunflower, varied from 361 mm in 2012, to 565.5 mm in 2013 against the past 30 years average of 730 mm. Despite this large variation between rainfall, application of hydrogel @ 2.5 kg/ha along with Vermicompost @1 t/ha gave significantly highest sunflower seed yield (1815 kg/ha) as compared to sole application of hydrogel (@ 2.5 kg/ha (1642 kg/ha) or Vermicompost (@1 t/ha (1532 kg/ha) and this is on par with the application of hydrogel @ 2.5 kg/ha along with Gypsum @100 kg/ha (1740 kg/ha). However, an economic analysis shows highest BC ratio was recorded with 2% CaCl2 along with Gouch treatment (4.12) as compared to other treatments