Climate Prediction for Sustainable Production of Rainfed Groundnuts in SAT Crop Establishment Risks in the Anantapur Region

Abstract

Groundnut is an important crop around the globe for its nutritional and trade values. As a result of diverse farming situations, there is a large variation in the productivity levels of groundnut around the world. In countries such as USA where the crop is grown on large farms with assured inputs, productivity levels are very high in comparison to a country such as India where the crop is traditionally grown by small-holding farmers, on less fertile soil, in rainfed conditions, with low inputs. In 1998, although the groundnut area in China was about half of that in India, the production exceeded that of India by nearly 10%. Groundnut productivity in India is low due to moisture stress, poor soil fertility, pests and diseases, and low inputs, and cultivation of the crop on marginal and submarginal lands. Nearly 80% of the area sown to groundnuts in India is rainfed and relies entirely on summer monsoon rainfall. The rainfall in most of the groundnut-growing regions is low and erratic. There is a high variability in the onset of monsoons, annual rainfall, and distribution of rainfall over the growing season. Moreover, such high variability in precipitation is generally associated with a high probability of an early season drought. Thus, rainfed agriculture in India is a risky proposition. One of the decision-making problems confronting the farmers at the onset of the cropping season is choice of an optimum sowing window. With the above in view, a research project was undertaken at ICRISAT to examine the trends in groundnut production in India over the past few decades in the global context, characterize the groundnut production environment of the Anantapur region, and to provide a first approximation