CLIMATE CHANGE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES ON MAJOR CROPS IN INDIA
RABINDRA K. PANIGRAHY
Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, New Delhi, India.
SUNIL LONDHE *
Spatial Sciences and Disaster Management (SS&DM) Group, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune - 411007, India.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Climate change and it impacts on global environment has been one of the prime focus of recent research. Climate change and its impact have been reported to advance with higher pace. There are variable impacts of climate change on different sectors and agriculture is extremely vulnerable among them. This paper briefly reviews the climate change projections, its impacts on agriculture, emphasising four major crops especially in Indian perspective. The changes in weather system could influence the agriculture by altering length and calendar of growing seasons, planting and harvesting calendars, water availability, land suitability, pest, weed and disease populations. Individual crops have critical climatic thresholds for their growth and development processes, failing which there could be a total collapse in the food grain production. Critical points for growth and development of crops in general and rice, wheat, maize and cotton in particular were reviewed.
Keywords: Agriculture, impacts, crops, simulation, wheat, rice, maize, cotton