Missed irrigation cycle in India's Punjabi may spell doom for wheat harvest

Around mid-March, when day and night time temperatures spiked, the state of Punjabi had no power to irrigate the wheat fields, and no water in canals either - as a result, experts predict that wheat production will not cross the 98 lakh tonne-mark this year, a slide from 111 lakh tonnes last year.

This fall in yield is starkly evident from the fact that on April 26, 2009, Punjab received around 3.19 lakh tonnes of wheat, which was a dismal 1.27 lakh tonnes this year. The peak season of wheat arrival is almost over and the entire procurement process will end by April 30. For a state that was harping on a bumper wheat crop, which over the due course changed to production as good as last year, the real figures now emerging are quite a climb down.

Punjab Farmers Commission Consultant Dr P S Rangi said, ''The crop in Punjab was doing quite well but one irrigation cycle, which the farmers could not provide to their crop in the last week of March, has done us in. It is not even the fault of farmers. They did not have the power to run their tube wells and even the canals were dry at that time.''