Climate Change Impact on Indian Agriculture - Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies

Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over extended periods. According to the Fourth Assessment Report of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), there is high confidence that recent regional changes in temperature and green house gases have discernible impacts on many physical and biological systems. Studies conducted in India reveal that minimum temperatures on annual and seasonal basis have shown strong increasing trend in majority of the locations in the country. Warming tendency is found to be strong during rabi season as compared to kharif. In India, there is no significant trend in the monsoonal rain, but the spatial variability accounts for slightly higher trend values in north-west, west coast and peninsular. A major part of the agriculture in India is rainfed and, therefore, highly vulnerable to rainfall variability. The frequency of extreme rainfall shows significant increasing trend over the Indian monsoon region during the south-west monsoon season. All these changes may impact Indian agriculture at the regional level creating more vulnerability in food security of the country. There is a need for using modern science combined with indigenous wisdom of the farmers to enhance the resilience of agriculture to climate change. Development of multiple stress tolerant varieties, resource conservation technologies, water harvesting and supplemental irrigation for drought proofing in rainfed areas can help in mitigating the adverse impact of climate change on agriculture.