Association of Agrometeorologists

Climatic variability and its impact on rice and wheat productivity in Punjab

SUNNY KUMAR and BALJINDER KAUR SIDANA

The annual and seasonal (kharif and rabi seasons) trends in temperature (maximum and minimum) and rainfall during 30 years (1986 to 2015) at five locations of Punjab (Bathinda, Faridkot, Ludhiana, SBS Nagar and Patiala) has been analysed. The study revealed that during the last three decades most of the stations experienced significant increase in maximum as well as minimum temperatures in both kharif and rabi seasons. In kharif season maximum temperature positively deviated by 0.12°C to 1.34°C whereas in wheat growing period the deviation results was from 0.13°C to 0.93°C at all the locations. The rainfall during kharif season has decreased by 23.2, 27.6, 55.4, 185.4 and 199.6 mm from normal at Bathinda, Faridkot, Ludhiana, SBS Nagar and Patiala districts, respectively in last three decades. Mann Kendall statistics showed increasing trend in maximum temperature and highlighted that the trend was highly significant in Faridkot, SBS Nagar and Patiala district. To know the impact of climate change quadratic form of regression was applied and the results revealed that the increase in minimum temperature during kharif and rabi season has negative effect on yield of rice and wheat crop in Punjab. Keywords:

Minimum and maximum temperature, rainfall, trends, Mann-Kendall statistics.