Development of crop-weather-pest calendars for wheat crop in Punjab

Crop-weather-disease calendars for eight different locations viz Ballowal Saunkhri, Ludhiana, Bathinda, Amritsar, Jalandhar, Patiala, Faridkot and Abohar in different agroclimatic zones of Punjab were developed for wheat by collecting and analyzing meteorological and crop data. The weekly and monthly normals of different meteorological parameters were computed from daily weather data for the 8 locations. These climatic normals were used for comparing the actual data to study the effect of different meteorological parameters on yield of wheat crop. The phenological calendars for the crop were computed using the crop data generated during the field experiments. Crop-weather calendars were formulated by combining the weekly climatic normals and phenological calendar for the crop along with optimum climatic normals needed for different phenological stages of the crop. The optimum climatic normals were worked out from actual meteorological data of high yield crop years over the past 11 years. The crop-weather-disease calendars also contain the climatic normals required for major diseases of the crop as well as susceptible crop phenological stages. The crop-weather-disease calendars developed for different growth stages that can be used for agro-advisory services for timely disease management and for prediction of high crop yield.