Study of Climatic Factors Affecting the Productivity of Cotton and its Instability

Cotton is an important commercial crop in India. The present study focuses on measurement of variability pattern of cotton yield and use of principal component analysis for developing cotton yield forecast model for Hisar district of Haryana (India). Instability index has been observed to study the variability behavior of cotton yield in the district. Time series data on cotton yield and fortnightly data of five weather variables for the crop season for 38 years (1980–91 to 2017–18) have been used. In all, three models have been developed by using direct weather variables, PC scores and components with higher loading as regressors and developed models have been used to forecast yield for four subsequent years 2014–15 to 2017–18 (which were not included in model development). The model with PC scores was found to be most appropriate to provide reliable yield forecast.

As cotton is prime commercial crop grown in Haryana, present study is focused on climatic factors affecting the cotton crop productivity on Hisar district. How the various climatic factors will affect cotton productivity at different growth stages. This study has demonstrated the utility of understanding and quantifying the relationships between cotton yield and weather variables. Trend yield (Tr) is an important parameter appearing in all the models, which is an indication of technological advancement, improvement in fertilizer/insecticide/pesticide/weedicide used and increased use of high yielding varieties.