Recent rain may reduce yield by 2% to 2.5% in affected areas: Punjab agri dept initial report

The report says that excess water was reported in 40,000 hectares of area each in Ludhiana and Muktsar Sahib districts.

In Fatehgarh Sahib district, 17,400 hectares of area and 11,700 hectares of area in Patiala district reported excess water problem.

Mohali and Mansa districts recorded a similar problem on 9,183 hectares and 6,336 hectares, respectively.
Tarn Taran, Moga, Hoshiarpur and Amritsar districts recorded lodging of water on 4,000 hectares, 3,000 hectares, 2,500 hectares and 1,620 hectares respectively. In Kapurthala and Sangrur districts, lodging of excess water happened on 1,000 hectares each.

Nawanshahr, Gurdaspur and Ropar districts recorded lodging of excess water on 750, 400 and 200 hectares, respectively.

However, Barnala, Bathinda, Faridkot, Fazilka, Ferozepur, Jalandhar and Pathankot districts have reported no damage so far.

The report says the yield in the affected area may decrease up to 5% in Amritsar and Moga district while it may go down between 5% and 10% in Fatehgarh Sahib district. In the remaining districts from where lodging of excess water has been reported, the yield is expected to drop from 1% to 2.4%.

Director, Punjab agriculture department, Dr Gurvinder Singh says that the yield in the affected area may be reduced between 2% and 2.5% as per the initial reports but the crop may improve where the lodging due to excess water has occurred if the weather remains good in the coming days.

However, due to the recent rain, no field fires have been reported in the past few days. So far, only 139 field fires have been reported from September 15 to September 29 against 188 fires in the same period last year and 589 fires in 2020.

Experts maintain that because of excess moisture in the harvested Basmati 1509 (early variety) fields, the burning of fields is not possible but it will increase manifold in the coming days when the stubble gets dry in the fields.