Centre asks States to promote heat tolerant wheat seeds in the rabi season

Centre asks States to promote heat tolerant wheat seeds in the rabi season

Subject :Geography

Section: Economic geography

Context:

• The Centre has asked States to promote heat resilient and high yielding varieties of wheat among farmers in the background of 5% drop in monsoon this year.

Details:

• National Conference on Agriculture for Rabi Campaign 2023-24:
  • Organized by: Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare
  • Aim: Agro-ecological suitable and need based Crop Diversification to be promoted in the country.
  • The conference was to review crop performance during the preceding crop seasons and fix crop-wise targets for the rabi season in consultation with State governments, and prepare a roadmap to ensure supply of critical inputs and facilitate adoption of innovative technologies to enhance production.
• Centre is targeting an increase in the coverage of area under heat-tolerant wheat varieties to 60% this season.
• Severe deficit in the reservoirs due to interrupted monsoon in Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Kerala, and Karnataka compared with the 10-year average.
• As per the third advance estimates (2022-23), the production of food grains in the country is estimated at 3,305 lakh tonnes, which is higher by 149 lakh tonnes than the previous season.
• Record production is estimated of rice, maize, gram, pulses, rapeseed, and mustard, oilseeds, and sugarcane. Total pulses and oilseeds production during 2022-23 is estimated at a record 275 and 410 lakh tonnes, respectively.
• The food grain production in the country had increased by 31% in the last eight years from 251.54 to 330.54 million tonnes.
• The Mustard Mission implemented for the last 3 years enhanced rapeseed & mustard production by 37% from 91.2 to 124.94 lakh tonnes.

Seed rolling plan:

• Preparation of Seed Rolling Plan is basically an exercise by which the states assess the seed requirement in different crops grown in and its suitable varieties (for Kharif and Rabi seasons) as per prescribed seed rate, the area under crop/variety, its seed replacement rate three years in advance.
• The second exercise is to identify different seed production agencies to which targets will be assigned in the preceding year to meet the seed requirement.
• The Seed Rolling Plan for FY 2023-24 is a statement of seed requirement for sowing of Kharif-2024 and Rabi 2024-25 crops and a statement of agency-wise seed production targets assigned in Kharif-2023 and Rabi 2023-24 to meet the seed requirement.

Source: TH