Cyclone Roanu is saviour of Odisha, West Bengal & Andhra Pradesh farmers

KOLKATA: Tropical cyclone Roanu, which brought showers to Odisha, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh this weekend before moving to Bangladesh, has given an opportunity to farmers in these states to prepare fields for kharif paddy well in advance, agricultural scientists said. The rains have also cheered up farmers in West Bengal and Odisha who have faced nearly 5% loss in bodo or rabi paddy production this year due to a dry spell from April till early May. Boro paddy is usually sown in November and harvested in May.

“The Met department has predicted a normal or above normal rain this year, which is good for the rain-fed paddy cultivating states that are mostly located in the eastern part of the country,” said AK Nayak, director, ICAR-National Rice Research Institute.

“But the rains brought by Roanu will help farmers prepare the field and go for high quality long duration crop,” he said.

As per the latest forecast, monsoon is likely to arrive over the Indian mainland six days later than normal and hit the Kerala coast on June 7. Of the total annual rice production of 102 million tonnes, eastern states contribute 52-55 million tonnes. Paddy is grown over nearly 22 million hectares of land across the country.

However, agricultural scientists indicated that the continuous heatwave in eastern India that continued in April till early May is likely to lower rabi or boro paddy crop by 5% in West Bengal and Odisha.

“High temperature affects the pollination stage of the paddy crop,” said Nayak. In some cases in late variety, paddy pollination may have got disturbed due to high temperature. If the temperature is above 37 degree celsius during pollination, then the process gets affected, he said. Nayak said that at the ripening stage, if temperature is high “packing of starch” in the grain gets affected and it develops chalkiness. “In simple words, productivity may not be affected but quality suffers,” he said. Scientists said in a temperature range of 22-31 degrees, the growth rate of paddy increases linearly. But higher temperature adversely affects growth.