High temperature reduces paddy yield in Malwa region

Balwant Garg

Tribune News Service

Faridkot, October 18

Exposure to hot weather conditions has significantly reduced paddy yield in Malwa this year. Farmers who have brought their crop to procurement centers are remorseful as the yield has reduced by three to five quintal per acre in comparison to the last paddy season.

In the last season, the average per acre yield of paddy was 32 to 34 quintal. This time, it has fallen to 27 to 29 quintal.

The fall in paddy yield is attributed to the prolonged summer season, when the daily temperature was above the critical threshold. “Exposure to an extreme temperature that exceeds the critical threshold of the crop has a strong negative effect on the yield,” said Baljinder Singh Brar, Chief Agriculture Officer (CAO), Faridkot.

“In the ripening phase of paddy which is subdivided into milky, dough, yellow, ripe, and maturity stages, the crop was exposed to a higher number of hotter days than the threshold, leading to shrinkage of grain after the milky stage. Besides the high temperature, high humidity had the adverse impact on pollination and it is reducing the overall formation of grains in the plants,” said Brar.

“The ripening phase starts at flowering and ends when the grain is mature and ready to be harvested. This stage usually takes 30 days. The low temperature may lengthen the ripening phase, while sunny and warm days may shorten it. September is the ripening phase for all varieties of paddy in Punjab and the temperature during this month this year was above normal,” said a senior official of the Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, Punjab Agriculture University (PAU), who did not wish to be named.

Yield has been reduced due to climatic vagaries, he said. So far, short time varieties of paddy have reached the mandis and these are showing the trend of a considerable fall in the yield. After all varieties, including long-duration varieties were harvested, the PAU will conduct a study on the climate variability and its impact on the kharif season crops, the PAU official said.

Experts in the Agriculture Department feel that in comparison to the short-duration varieties of paddy, the hot climate will make less adverse impact on the long-duration varieties of paddy.

The experts attribute the low yield to early sowing of paddy this season. As the Lok Sabha elections were round the corner, in the first week of May this year, the state government had announced to allow sowing a week ahead of the schedule June 20.

The permission to sow paddy from June 13 exposed the crop to the high temperature at the flowering and milking stage. Had the paddy sown on June 20, it would have delayed the ripening stage and not exposed the crop to the high temperature in September, they said.