Vol. 7, Issue 7 (2018)

Author(s):
T Panigrahi and S Pasupalak

Abstract:
Khordha is an important coastal district of Odisha comprises of ten blocks which comes under East & South-eastern coastal plain agro-climatic zone. Agriculture plays a vital role in the economic development of the district. Agriculture in Khordha district is rainfed as well as irrigated however more area comes under rainfed as compared with irrigated. Hence, rainfall plays a dynamic role for crop production in the district. Growing season characterisation is an essential part of agriculture to identify the climatic risks and for a pragmatic crop planning. The determination of start, end and duration of growing season, and the pattern of dry spell during the season is useful information for the planning of land preparation and planting activities. The timing and distribution of rainfall determine both the length and quality of growing season. Using over 20 years of climatic datafor Khordha District in Odisha, the study presents an analysis of growing season characteristics and other meteorological variables. Temperature is one of the limiting factor for both rainfed and irrigation based agriculture however in Indian context rainfall is more limiting for crop planning and productivity. The methods delaminates the growing season in the present study was based on rainfall, temperature and available soil moisture. Length of growing period (LGP) was calculated through a simple water balance model of FAO by taking weekly precipitation (PPT), potential evapotranspiration (PET) and available water holding capacity (AWHC) of soil. Soil moisture plays a big role in determining LGP in rainfed equal as break monsoon/dry period. The average growing season length in Khordha was 26 weeks at 50 mm soil water storage. Hence it was concluded that, more than one number of long duration crop (150 days) can’t be grown without supplementary irrigation. So there is a need of reorientation of cropping pattern by taking a cereal crop of 120 days duration followed by a pulse crop of 60 days duration to exploited limited cropping system.