Studies on Drought Characteristics and Crop Yields over India Using Statistical Methods

Abstract

Studies on the characteristics of droughts attained profound importance over newlineIndia in the contest of global teleconnections. Numerous studies have been done to newlinestudy the estimation of droughts using several meteorological, hydrological and agro newlinemeteorological variables. These studies were useful in understanding the relation newlinebetween drought and aforementioned parameters, which can be used as the indicator newlineof the droughts. Recent studies on droughts emerged with the combination of newlinemeteorological and agrometeorological indices along with the satellite derived newlineindices. However the studies on the response of meteorological /agrometeorological newlineparameters to the drought conditions are sparse over India. Hence in the present newlinework we have used evapotranspiration data sets estimated from the widely used newlineHargreaves and samani [1981] method to study its response to drought over India. newlineFurther the study emphasize the importance of crop yield of India. Since, India is an newlineagrarian country, the studies on major crop yields such as rice, maize, jowar, bajra newlineand wheat and their relation with food products, needs to be explored. As globally newlinereported by several researchers that the demand for food is increasing, the global newlinefood production to be doubled by 2050 to cater the needs of increasing population. newlineKeeping in view of above points, the present thesis is written to address the three newlineobjectives: Response of evapotranspiration to the drought conditions over India, newlinetrends in crop yields over India and their relation to food products, food inadequacy newlineand the extreme value analysis of crop yields over India and Andhra Pradesh state to newlineunderstand the future crop yields for different return periods newline