High day temp may hit wheat yield

Sushil Manav

Tribune News Service

Sirsa, February 5

The rise in day temperature is worrying farmers who fear a poor yield of wheat if it continues like this.

The mercury hovers around 23 to 25 degrees in daytime but slips to 6 to 10 degrees at night.

“We are worried if the current situation prevails, wheat yield would suffer ,” said Kulwant, a farmer from Panniwala in Sirsa.

Wheat crop is currently at the stem elongation stage.

“The crop generally takes 150 to 160 days to mature and the crop is already 75 to 90 days old,” said Gurjeet Singh Mann, a progressive farmer from Kirpal Patti village. “The longer the winter, the better it is for the crop,” he said.

“Silver lining is that the night temperature is still hovering around 10 degrees. Sunny days have their own advantage due to better photosynthesis and better opportunity to apply nutrients to wheat such as zink, ferrous, sulphur, manganese etc as  farmers become lethargic in foggy and chilly weather and skip these important elements,” he reasoned.

He said the next stage was the emergence of heads and flowering when the temperature must not be very high for  good health of the wheat crop.

Dr RK Gupta, Director of the Indian Institute of Wheat and Barley Research (IIWBR), said: “A prolonged winter is in the interest of the crop. If the night temperature remains at 15-16 degrees and there is no steep rise in the day temperature in February and March, a bumper crop can be expected like in 2013-14 when 95.93 lakh MT of wheat was produced in the country,” Gupta added. 

He said the crop was mostly free from yellow rust this year and wherever sporadic signs of the disease had been seen, scientists of the IIWBR had visited the farms and suggested remedial measures.