Abstract
The rainfall, one of the most important natural input resource for dryland agricultural production system, is erratic and temporal in nature. An attempt has been made to analyze thirty years (1990-2019) of meteorological data for prediction of probable week of onset and withdrawal of monsoon and to end with crop planning in North Gujarat region (India).The highest and lowest amount of weekly rainfall was observed in 27th and 39th SMW, respectively. The probability distribution functions viz. generalized extreme value, Gumbel maximum, Gamma and Weibull were found best-fit for prediction of weekly rainfall. The analysis revealed 26th SMW (25 Jun – 01 Jul) and onwards as the most suited sowing time of kharif crops. There are also chances of occurrence of moisture stress during 34th and 35th SMW. The results would be useful for agricultural scientists, researchers, decision makers and policy planners in the field of agricultural crop planning and irrigation management for semi arid regions.
Highlights
Agriculture is the backbone of India as it feeds ever growing population and provides employment to about 58 per cent of the population
Analysis of thirty years (1990-2019) weekly rainfall data indicated that the monsoon starts effectively from 24th SMW (11th-17th June) and remains active up to 39th SMW (24th-30th September)
The analysis revealed that total assured rainfall of 350 mm at 50 per cent probability levels was received during the cropgrowing period (26-37th SMW)
Summary
Agriculture is the backbone of India as it feeds ever growing population and provides employment to about 58 per cent of the population. The FAO56 PM equation has been widely used as a benchmark method to calibrate, validate and evaluate other methods as per availability of climatic data for estimating ET0 (Gocic et al, 2015; Trajkovic et al, 2020).MAI is prime factor for crop planning (cropping system, cropping pattern, etc.) especially in dryland agriculture. In such systems the monthly MAI values were not truly representative as month is a longer period for planning and cultural operation. To fulfill the above mentioned aspect, studied weekly rainfall characterization and moisture availability index to suggest crops and cropping systems for North Gujarat region
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