Vol. 9, Issue 9 (2020)

Author(s):
Priyanka Sharma, SS Randhawa, RS Rana and Harish Bharti

Abstract:
Agriculture sector plays a vital role in global economic, nutritional and food security along with conservation of natural resource use. At the same time, it is one of the most vulnerable sectors to the impacts of climate change, owing to its sensitivity to extreme and sudden variations in temperature and precipitation. To this effect, a status study was conducted with a view to ascertain the impact of climate change on agricultural activities in District Mandi. The mean maximum temperature increased by 0.035 °C per year during Kharif crop season. Meanwhile, the diurnal temperature exhibited a increasing trend of 0.057 °C per year. Rainfall did not register any statistically significant result during the study period. Moreover, the Standardized Anomaly Index of maximum temperature depicted a warming trend from 2002 onwards except for dips in 2004 and 2008. During the Rabi crop season, the diurnal temperature increased by 0.030 °C per year. Maximum and minimum temperature and Rainfall did not register any statistically significant result. Meanwhile, the Standardized Anomaly Index (SAI) of maximum temperature showed a warming trend from 2006 onwards whereas minimum temperature showed warming trend from 2005 onwards. As per the output from the multivariate regression analysis, for all assessed crop varieties viz., Wheat, Maize, Barley and Rice only 10.1%, 11.3%, 5.2%, 26.1% and 6.1% of productivity variability could be explained from temperature and rainfall variations in the district, respectively. With respect to individual crops, positive significant values were recorded for rice crop with 26.1% change and non significant values were recorded for Wheat, Barley Maize and Potato from 1970 to 2010.