Tuesday, 5 March 2013

cyclone and its impact on agriculture




Nature of damages caused by cyclones to agricultural
crops
1. Mortality of plants
2. Suppression of tillering in rice
3. Complete or partial lodging in rice, cotton, sugarcane,  
           vegetables, tobacco etc
4. Uprooting of plants in coconut, banana, sugarcane,  
           orchards and field crops
5. Yellowing and shedding of leaves
6. Excessive vegetative growth in cotton
7. Increased virulence of pests and diseases. For Example sheath
blight, bacterial leaf blight, brown plant hopper in rice, pod
borers, die-back, fruit rot in vegetables like chillies and tomato,
helicoverpa incidence and rotting of bolls in cotton and wilting
of plants.
8. Shattering of grains/pods where the crop is in ripening or
            maturity phase
9. Nutritional disorders and toxicities
10. Wetting of harvested rice sheaves in the field
11. Soil salinity build up and soil erosion in varying degrees 
            depending upon the  land topography.
12. Water logging of cultivated lands
13. Sand casting in land areas due to tidal waves lashing the coast
14. Difficulty in threshing, cleaning and drying of agricultural
Produce

Economic consequences of cyclones
1. Land degradation and loss of soil productivity
2. Considerable expenditure on land reclamation
3. Reduction in total agricultural production
4. Damage to the ecosystem
5. Disruption of roads, transport, communication  
    and human settlements
6. Reduction in aquaculture activities



Mitigation options
a) Rice
1. If the crop is caught in cyclone or tidal waves at maturity
stage, drain the paddies and thresh the rice sheaves
immediately. Use of threshers/mechanical dryers to quick
threshing, cleaning and drying of grain need to be
explored.
2. Reclaim the salinated fields, by flooding with good quality
irrigation water leaching the salts and draining the fields
followed by puddling. Apply SSP @ 100 kg/ha to hasten
the decomposition of stubbles for preparing the field in
time for second crop. Raise nurseries on non-saline soil.
3. In fodder nurseries situations due to complete failure of
rice crop raise fodder crops like pillipesera, cowpea, sun
hemp etc., in marginal lands unfit for rice cultivation.
4. In area where rice cultivation is not possible, raise
alternate crops like groundnut, maize, rabi redgram,
blackgram, rabi castor etc.
5. Control rodents through community approach

b) Cotton and chillles

1. Carryout the earthing up by carefully lifting the lodged  
plants
2. Raise coriander or Chickpea or Black gram or sunnhemp in
fields where the cotton crop is completely damaged due to
uprooting
3. Spray 2% urea on cotton plants having foliage

c) Banana
1. Remove the damaged plants by leaving two suckers
2. Fertilize the plants for four months @ 80 g urea and 80g  
muriate of potash/plant.
3. Cover the bunches on damged plants with leaves and harvest
them within 15 to 20 days

d) Coconut
1.       Cut and remove the twisted leaves
2.       Provide support to hanging bunches
3.        Apply a booster fertilizer dose @ 0.5 kg Diammonium phosphate,
0.5 kg Urea and 1.5 kg muriate of potash per plant to bearing
palm trees

e) Acid lime
1.  Uplift the fallen trees and carryout the earthing up
2.  Remove the damaged branches and apply Bordeaux paste 

Sand casting
Deposition of sand particles on the agricultural fields due to
natural calamities is termed as sand casting


1. Where sand casting is about 15 cm, incorporate the same into the
soil by ploughing with wooden or mould board or disc plough.
This may be followed by normal cultivation.
2. Where the sand casting is between 15 to 60 cm, sand may   be
removed using bulldozers. This may be followed by normal
cultivation.
3. Where sand casting is more than 60 cm, no reclamation or
removal of sand is suggested, since this would be costly and
difficult to dump the sand so removed in the nearby fields: in
such cases, plant horticultural crops like cashew nut, coconut
and casuarinas etc, in situ,

No comments:

Post a Comment