After Drought It’s The Fog, For Poor Crop

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New Delhi, January 23:: Insufficient rains, cold wave and fog sweeping over North India hold out dim prospects for the rabi crop.

All crop in the current rabi season is lagging behind in area coverage as compared to the previous year’s period.

Soil moisture stress has been accentuated by the monsoon failure in 2002 coupled with 33 per cent deficiency in post-monsoon rains over the country and now with poor rains in the winter.

Winter rains in the first two weeks of January has been deficient by 72 per cent. Out of 36 meteorological subdivisions in the country, only three— Uttaranchal, West UP and East UP— have received excess rains in winter so far. Bihar and Andaman & Nicobar Islands were the only two subdivisions to have received normal rains. According to India Meteorological Department (IMD) as many as 27 subdivisions received scanty to deficient rains. Rayalaseema, Telangana, Vidarbha, Saurashtra, Kutch and Diu were left completely high and dry.

The year 2002 was recorded as the second warmest year after 1998 and this has caused delay in arrival of winter by three months. And the sudden arrival of severe winter in January and the cold wave sweeping over North India have invited the concern of agro scientists.

The director-general of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), Dr Mangla Rai said, “during January the temperature has gone down from three to seven degree centigrade specially during night and the cold wave with fog has been persisting for 21 days. Such cold wave conditions are prevalent in Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, North Rajasthan, UP, Bihar and West Bengal.

Normally cold waves occur for 10 days in January and that too with intermittent rains. Even if the fog is cleared, the chilly winds may cause greater injury to crop than fog. The unique features this year are the dense fog, lesser sunshine, high humidity and no rains.”

Dr Rai said this situation would cause aphids to appear on sugarcane and mustard, late blight on potatoes and tomatoes and cause severe physical injury to all crop. He said that if the temperature goes down further, water in the cells of plants would be frozen and it would force the rupture of the cells, hindering the healthy growth.