Pre Harvest Forecasting of Kharif Rice Yield Using Weather Parameters for Strategic Decision Making in Agriculture

In the recent year, pre harvest crop yield forecasting has been a topic of interest for producers, policy makers, government and agricultural related organizations. Pre harvest crop forecasting is important for national food security. Construction of appropriate yield forecast promotes the output of scenario analyses of crop production at a farm level, which enables suitable tactical and strategic decision making by the farmer. Indeed, considerable benefits apply when seasonal forecasting of crop performance is applied across the whole value chain in crop production. Timely and accurate yield forecast is essential for crop production, marketing, storage and transportation decisions as well as for managing the risk associated with these activities. In present manuscript efforts were made for development of pre harvest forecast models by using different statistical approaches viz. multiple linear regression (MLR), discriminant function analysis and ordinal logistic regression. The study utilized the crop yield data and corresponding weekly weather data of last 30 years (1985-2014). The model development was carried out at 35th and 36th SMW (Standard Meteorological Week) for getting forecast well in advance of actual harvesting of the field crop. The study revealed that method of discriminant function analysis gave best pre harvest forecast as compare to remaining developed models. It was observed high value of Adj. R2= 0.94, low value of RMSE= 164.24 and MAPE= 5.30. The model can be used in different crop for reliable and dependable forecast and these forecasts have significant value in agricultural planning and policy making.