The vagaries often attain proportion of calamities leading to unprecedented food, fodder and fuel insecurity and ultimately putting economic and livelihood security of rain dependent farming population at stake. Rainfed farming is subjected to vagaries of weather in recent time more than ever before affecting crops on mass scale. By and large the market and trade has always been unfavorable to farm produced commodities with consistently rising input costs making input-output relationship beyond control of farmers aggravating the calamities to disastrous dimensions. Rainfed farming in 70% of the cultivated land and its dependent population has been under such continuous distress and traumatic situation that several of them frustrated to end their life. The natural calamities in rainfed farming have following dimensions resulting partial or complete loss of production activities.

• Very low rainfall and rainy days
• Drought in early phases (delayed onset)
• Drought during flowering and grain formation 
• Heavy continuous rainfall after sowing 
• Flood damage to established crop
• Continuous excess moisture in root Zone due to extended rains 
• Heavy rains during harvesting & threshing

In recent time, the rainfed farming is subjected more often to excess rains and flood damage causing huge losses to crops and properly. The floods may not even permit farmer for resowing of the same crop or alternate crops for food and fodder security. The availability of seed and planting material and other inputs after floods is a greatest problem faced by the farmers. Besides, very little efforts and investment goes into developing viable technology for such contingency situations. There is urgent need to establish R and D network for generating location specific contingency technology under varied conditions of drought to floods on calamity scale. 

Current century has been predicted to witness climate change and wide spread extremes of climatic events, rainfall being most crucial among them, large population of our country may have to face unprecedented and unpredictable events of extreme nature in rainfed areas. It is, thus a new challenge before planners, scientist’s politicians and all to develop ways and mechanisms for ensuring rainfed farmers in mitigating such extremes and alleviation of losses through viable technological support.

The present paper attempts to provide over view of some contingency technologies for rainfed farming in Konkan to ensure livelihood security to farmers.

However, sustainability and security in rainfed farming could be insured through following strategic approaches and participatory modes. Nevertheless the action program must envisage missionary zeal.

• Rainfed farming must be knowledge intensive
• Diversification in agriculture in farming system mode
• Alternate land use under agro-forestry systems
• Liberal Crop Insurance schemes
• Credit availability at low interest
• Quick input supply with heavy subsidy
• Appropriate mechanization
• Launching projects on farmers participatory mode
• Holistic approach involving multi-disciplinary, multi-commodity and multi-institutional approach

Konkan region of Maharashtra receives 2500 to 3500 mm of rainfall annually. Ninety percent of rainfall is received during June to October (Anonymous, 1986). Inspite of high water potential in the region, especially, during kharif season, the kharif crops suffer mainly due to aberrations in rainfall i.e. delayed onset of monsoon, heavy continuous rains leading to flash foods coupled with low light intensity and intermittent dry spells. On several occasions the region receives heavy continuous rains leading to wet famine, which damage the growing crop physically due to sedimentation and prolonged complete sub-mergence by flood water and also physiologically by very low light intensity. Rice is the major crop grown in the region along with finger millet, panicum millet, niger, etc. grown on hill slopes. Crop management practices for various crops during such aberrant weather based on recent research finding are discussed in the present paper.

Delayed Outset of Monsoon

First week of June is normal time for onset of monsoon in Konkan. However, many a times, monsoon is delayed by 15-20 days leading to delayed sowing as well as transplanting of rice. Under such circumstances the farmers can adopt contingency crop production technology for alleviating effect of unfavourable rainfall.

In low lying area, rice varieties with medium duration (130-135 days) viz. palghar-1, Sahyadri hybrid, Karjat-5 should be grown in place of late maturing varieties. For mid-land, early varieties like Ratna, R-711, R-24, Karjat-4, etc could be grown, whereas, in uplands very early varieties, maturing in 90-100 days, may be grown so as to mitigate impending moisture stress during grain formation and maturity stages. Rahu method of sowing rice be followed for uplands and midlands or mat nursery should grown and 15 days old seedlings be trans planted in the field to avoid loss of time. In uplands, pulses like Cowpea (Var. C-152, Konkan Sadabahar), Blackgram (Var. T-9, Sindhkheda-1) oilseeds like Sesame (Phule Til-1), Niger (IPG-76) groundnut (TG-26, Phule Pragati) and hill millet like Ragi (B-11 and D-1) can be successfully grown under delayed monsoon rains.

Intermittent Dry Spells

If the prolonged dry spells coincide with the critical growth stages of the crops, especially, at flowering, which affect the grain production adversely.

Continuous light rains for rice during nursery stage are of prime importance for growing healthy and vigorous seedlings. If there is dry spell during the nursery stage of rice, it hampers seedling growth severely, especially, on upland situation. To sustain the water stress during early stages of seedling it is advisable to apply one kilogram of muriate of potash per acre before severity of water stress. If possible irrigation may be given during the dry spell. 

Sometimes there is possibility of dry spell during transplanting time, which creates difficulty in puddling, and thus delays subsequent transplanting of rice. Under such circumstances farmers are compelled for late transplanting or transplanting of overaged seedlings which results in very low yield and heavy pest incidence.

Such late transplanted seedlings when supplemented with higher dose of nitrogen as top dressing gives equal yield to that of normal transplanted crop which is evident from the data presented in (Table 1) as reported by Wagh et al.

Similarly, when the seedling cross right age (21 to 25 days) at transplanting, close planting (15 X 15cm) with more number of seedling (4 to 5) per hill can help to alleviate the effect of delayed transplanting. This could be coupled with additional nitrogen (25%) dose with advantage.

If the dry spells coincide with the critical growth stages of rice like flowering, grain formation and maturity stage of rice, it affects the grain filling and production adversely [1-2].

Table 1: Interaction Effect of Age of Seedlings at Transplanting and Nitrogen Levels on Grain Yield (Q/Ha) of Rice (Pooled)

Heavy Continuous Rains Leading to Flash Floods

On several occasions, the region received heavy continuous rains leading to wet famine, which damaged the growing crop completely or partially due to sedimentation and submergence under prolonged flood water. In Konkan, such flash floods occur generally in the months of July and August. Alternative contingency cropping pattern to face such aberrant weather condition could be suggested to save the farmers form partial or complete loss [3-5]. 

Complete submergence for a short time also affects the growth of rice crop. Under such situation it is advisable to apply additional dose of nitrogen @ 25 kg/ha as a top dressing to recover the crop from suppressed growth and regain vigour.

Early Heavy Rains

Early heavy and continuous rainfall may cause delay in sowing as well as reduce the germination of rice seed sown in dry nursery. This may cause partial or complete loss of seedlings requiring resowing. Considering such situation, nursery sowing on raised beds and using upland area for nursery could be advised. Under resowing situation early and midlate varieties may be used. Similarly, techniques like mat nursery could be adopted for timely planting of crop to avoid losses due to delayed transplanting of the crop.

Delayed Cessation of Rainfall

Delayed cessation of rainfall may cause losses to mature crop due to lodging, grain shedding, germination of seed, etc. Many times harvested crop in the field is also caught in heavy continuous rains. Under such situations it is necessary to harvest the crop and immediately go for threshing of the grains to avoid losses. Even though the delayed rainfall causes damage to early and mid-late rice varieties, it is useful to late rice varieties and post monsoon residual moisture crops.

Low light Intensity

In Konkan region of Maharashtra rainfall during kharif is received from June to October and during most of the period the bright sunshine hours range between 2 to 4 during the crop period. Reduced light intensity especially during flowering cause reduced rate of photosynthesis and low yield. Therefore, staggered sowing of early, midlate and late varieties may help in exposing the crop to bright sunshine and alleviate the effect of low light intensity. Similarly, hybrid varieties having high photosynthetic ability in low light could be included in cropping.

1. Singh, H. et al. Response of some varieties to soil moisture regimes. Indian Journal of Agronomy, vol. 30, no. 2, 1984, pp. 281–282.

2. Patel, S.R. and A.S. Sastri. Water balance analysis of the effect of drought on upland rice. International Rice Research Newsletter, vol. 10, no. 2, 1985, pp. 30.

3. Turner, R.B. et al. An evaluation of Echinacea angustifolia in experimental rhinovirus infections. New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 353, 2005, pp. 341–348.

4. Zaslawski, C. The ethics of complementary and alternative medicine research: a case study of traditional Chinese medicine at the University of Technology, Sydney. Monash Bioethics Review, vol. 24, 2005, pp. 52–60.

5. Zhao, L. and K. Chan. Building a bridge for integrating Chinese medicine into conventional healthcare: observations drawn from the development of the Chinese quality of life instrument. American Journal of Chinese Medicine, vol. 33, 2005, pp. 897–902.