Heavy rains hit crops in South

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Bangalore, Mar 24: Heavy rains for the past one week have affected agricultural crops especially the plantation crops in Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

"Untimely rain has affected the blossoming process of coffee plants in Karnataka. Usually blossom shower comes during the last week of March or the beginning of April. But this time it happened a fortnight earlier," Karnataka Planters' Association president Jeffery Rebello said.

He said early rains would affect the plants that were getting ready to mature for the next crop year 2008-09, for which the harvest would start in November and continue through February 2009. As coffee is a cyclical crop (production is usually high every alternative year), planters have anticipated better Arabica output in the next crop year. According to post-monsoon estimates of the Coffee Board, Arabica production for 2007-08 stood at 92,500 tonne, down from 99,700 tonne produced in the previous crop year of 2006-07.

In Karnataka alone, Arabica production for 2007-08 is estimated at 73,950 tonne, down from 76,300 tonne a year ago. As the crop output for the current year was lower than the last year, planters expected that the crop for the next year would be good. But early rains spoiled the expectations, farm sources said.

Another crop that may be hit by erratic rain is arecanut in Dakshina Kannada region that is already affected by fruit-rot disease during the last rainy season. This time, farmers fear that untimely rains may result in "button shedding" in the plantations. Rain during summer followed by spells of bright sunshine may result in falling of areca buttons from the yielding palms.

Even farmers, who were drying arecanut harvested early this year, would be affected if rains continued further. This would mainly affect marginal farmers in two states of Karnataka and Kerala, which accounted for about 70% of the total arecanut production of about 3.4 lakh tonne in the country.

Mango cultivation in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh may also get hit this season. The inopportune rain in Mysore in Karnataka and Krishnagiri belt in Tamil Nadu has affected tender mangoes that are getting ready for harvest.