Abstract
Abstract. This study was conducted to understand the changes in spatiotemporal characteristics of wheat crop production including the changes in area and yield. We employed the emerging hot and cold spot analysis along with space time cube and space-time cluster density analysis to study the spatial changes in wheat crop production, area and yield, and understand the changes in spatiotemporal features. We made a comprehensive analysis of the changes in wheat crop production, area and yield on pan India basis for the period from 1999 to 2015. The major findings were: (a) During the study period significant increase in wheat yield occurred within the North Indian states of Punjab and Haryana and intensifying hot spots appeared within the Indo-Gangetic plains. (b) The Analysis of the area under wheat cultivation showed a persistent hot spot in the Northern states of Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana, with new hot spots observed in the regions of Central India during the years 2014 and 2015. (d) The analysis of the wheat crop production showed significant new cold spots in Rajasthan and Gujarat, with intensifying hotspots emanating into the lower delta regions of Ganges. Present study also revealed the potential of GIS based data models when related with additional background information, to segregate the most significant clusters of changes (increase / decrease) happening over active wheat crop cultivation. We expect the results from this study to help in increasing the wheat crop yield and production in the future.
Highlights
Considerable changes have been made in wheat crop cultivation over the past decades, largely driven by the crop yield enhancement to meet the global demand for food due to the increase in global population (Ramankutty et al 2008)
We aim to provide knowledge for improving wheat crop production which will be useful to enhance wheat production to tackle the threats due to increase in population and climate change
3.1Changes in Wheat crop Area, Production and Yield Within 1999 and 2015, wheat crop cultivation area has improved on an average by 0.2695 Mha yr-1 in India (Figure 2a & b), even though by and large the increase in rates improved during this time duration
Summary
Considerable changes have been made in wheat crop cultivation over the past decades, largely driven by the crop yield enhancement to meet the global demand for food due to the increase in global population (Ramankutty et al 2008). Today geostatistics are used to explore and describe spatial variation in agricultural data: Heat stress (Teixeira et al, 2013); yield simulations (Priya, S., & Shibasaki,, 2001); Yield trends (Ray et al, 2013); forest loss (Harris et al, 2017); yield and grain quality (Diacono, et al, 2012); yield potential and yield gap (Chen et al, 2017) and even for disease (Atkinson, P.J., & Unwin 2002) These data and other products obtained from agricultural crop data have basically transformed the manner in which the global crop growth are observed and monitored. These visual examinations do not provide a clear guidance of identifying more elusive, still vital, developments in the acceleration or deceleration of wheat cultivation in any region
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