ABSTRACT

The crop calendar of a particular region is extensively dependent on rainfall. And the onset of the rainy season plays a vital role to maintain it. Thus the rainfall variability can hamper the crop calendar vividly, and affect the whole agricultural system, including yield and production. The condition might become more difficult for the developing countries, where a huge number of small and marginal farmers are solely dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. Since more than 60% of India’s total agricultural land is rain-fed, a large proportion of it is used to cultivate rice therefore, and rainfall variability has a direct impact on the Indian agricultural system especially on rice farming. Limited irrigation facility, and exposure to extreme climatic events (e.g. cyclones) makes agriculture of the coastal zones as one of the most vulnerable areas to rainfall variability. The current study intends to find out the impact of rainfall variability on the crop calendar of Rain-fed rice cultivation in the Purba Medinipur coastal area, a part of the east coast of India. The study analysed the rainfall data of a long term period, and identified the years with very high to extreme rainfall anomaly for the period of 2010-2020 by applying Rainfall Anomaly Index. And examined the crop calendars of those particular years, then compared with a normal year’s crop calendar. To analyse the crop calendar, some vegetation indices have been calculated for the growing season and heading season by using MODIS data. The result of the study depicted that the value of vegetation indices of the rainfall variability years are low to very low in most of the areas in the growing season, but it becomes high to very high in the heading season. On the other hand, normal years achieved the maximum values of vegetation indices in most of the areas in just the growing season. Hence the result has a clear indication of modification of crop calendar according to the onset of the rainy season to cope up with the rainfall variability as stated in the farmers’ perception data. Keywords: Crop calendar, Rain-fed rice cultivation, farmers’ perception, rainfall variability
Publication date: 15/01/2022

https://ijbpas.com/pdf/2022/January/MS_IJBPAS_2022_JAN_SPCL_1070.pdf

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https://doi.org/10.31032/IJBPAS/2022/11.1.1070