Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
a rising field in Indian economy where fruit crops the highest promise.
Horticulture contribution to the GDP is 31% and 54% to the export in ag-
riculture contributed merely through 9% of area. Citrus is one of the most
important fruit crops of India grown in 9.27 lakh ha with a production of
86.95 lakh tons and average productivity of 9.23 tons ha
-1
(Indian Horti-
culture Database, 2012).
There are two major agencies, which are highly devoted to study the
soil fertility and climate change. The first one is the Tropical Soil Biology
and Fertility (TSBF) initiated in 1984 by International Union of Biologi-
cal Sciences and NESCO to research on the role of biological processes in
maintenance of soil fertility. Whereas the second one is, the International
Geosphere-Biosphere Program (IGBP) aims to describe and understand
the interactive physical, chemical, and biological processes that regulate
total earth system.
Recently, Inter-Governmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) has
reconfirmed that the global atmospheric concentrations of carbon diox-
ide, methane and nitrous oxide, greenhouse gases (GHGs), have increased
markedly as a result of human activities since 17th century and presently
huge preindustrial values determined from ice cores across many thou-
sands of years (Drake et al., 1997). The increment in GHGs raised the
temperature increase in the climate by 0.74°C between 1906 and 2005.
An estimation of 12 years (1995-2006), considering the temperature of
the environment, revealed that 11 years ranked among the 12 hottest years
in the instrumental record of global surface temperature. IPCC has opted
that the increase in temperature by the end of this century may be ranged
between 2 and 4.5°C.
It is proposed that rainfall over India will rise by 15-40%, whereas
the mean annual temperature will increase by 3-6°C by the end of 21st
century. Therefore, such changes in terms of climate change could affect
citrus crops through its direct and indirect effects.
11.2
CLIMATE ANALYSIS FOR CITRUS
Climate is the most important component of commercial citriculture,
which determines the difference in growth, yield and quality due to differ-
ential behavior of citrus in relation to climate-soil nexus (Kurihara, 1969;
Reuther, 1973). However, citrus is well adapted to a wide range of climate
