Showers bring hope of bumper paddy harvest
CHANDIGARH: : The current spell of rainfall across Punjab, owing to climatic disturbance, has proved to be a boon for the farmers during the ongoing paddy sowing season, raising hopes for a bumper rice crop.
The rainfall that began in the intervening night of Wednesday and Thursday, as per predictions by the meteorology department, will continue till June 21-22. As per a bulletin issued by the meteorology department, the mild to heavy rainfall (between 10 mm to 40 mm) has hit the entire state, including the regions of Majha, Doaba, and East and West Malwa.
The temperatures have also fallen five to eight degrees Celsius, leading to fall in power consumption by about 1,500 megawatts, which peaked to 12,500 megawatts three days ago.
“The fear of a bad crop due to severe heat wave is over for the time being and we are hopeful of good beginning and a bumper crop,” director agriculture Gurvinder Singh said.
An officer of the state agriculture department said that paddy growers in the state should make best use of the wet spell for sowing paddy with the conventional method of transplanting in the puddle fields or with the nonconventional method of direct seeded rice (DSR).
“The spell will prove beneficial for the paddy crop, as due to rainfall and plummeting of the temperatures, there will be less evaporation and it will take lesser time to irrigate the fields. Now due to rainfall, puddling of one acre will take an estimated two hours, which during peak temperatures would have taken at least four hours,” said Makhan Singh Bhullar, head, department of agronomy, Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) at Ludhiana.
In puddled fields, transplantation is done in a layer of 4-5 centimeters of water. Actually, it requires 19-20 centimeters of water as in the process, lots of water percolates back into the soil and also evaporates.
As per calculation by professor Ajmer Singh Brar of PAU’s agronomy department, an acre of paddy field requires 600 to 750 cubic meters of water, depending on weather, soil and geographical conditions.
“Owing to the ongoing spell of the rainfall, water requirement has definitely come down,” he added. As per the figures of ‘commission for agricultural costs and prices’ (CACP), which fixes the minimum support prices for the crops every season, a production of a kilogram of rice requires 3,367 litres of water.
In Punjab, paddy is sown over 72 lakh acres. Out of the total area, 17 lakh acres is expected under basmati and so far, one lakh acre have been sown under DSR variety.
Bhullar added that the ideal time for paddy transplantation is after June 20 for mid duration varieties and from July 1 for short duration varieties and premium aromatic Basmati.