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

A study was conducted by collecting and analyzing meteorological, crop and pest data for the period of 1999–2009 to formulate the crop-weather-pest calendars for rice for seven locations in different agroclimatic zones of Punjab. The weekly and monthly normals of different meteorological parameters were computed from daily weather data for all the locations. These climatic normals were used for comparing actual data to study the effect of different meteorological parameters on yield of rice crop. The phenological calendars for the crop were computed using the crop data generated during the field experiments conducted at Ludhiana. Crop-weather-calendars have been formulated for rice 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. In addition to the above information, the crop-weather-pest calendars contain the climatic normals favourable for occurrence of particular pest at particular phenological stage. The crop-weather-pest calendars developed for rice crop for different growth stages can be used for prediction of crop yields. These calendars act as a guiding tool while issuing agro-advisory for the farmers of the region and can be used to advise them for need- based spraying of the pesticides for managing insect pests in rice crop.