© 2017 PP House Increasing Wheat Productvity under Variable and Changing Climatc Conditons in West Bengal, India A. Mukherjee 1&2* , A. K. S. Huda 1 , T. L. Thentu 3 and S. Banerjee 2 1 School of Science and Health, Western Sydney University, Hawkesbury Campus, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith, NSW (27 51), Australia 2 AICRP on Agrometeorology, Directorate of Research, 3 Dept. of Agronomy, Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya, West Bengal (741 235), India Wheat is the second important cereal crop afer rice in West Bengal. However, its area of cultvaton and producton remain almost stagnant in recent years due to lower productvity of the crop. Inter seasonal climatc variability is one of the most important reasons behind it. Thus, there is a need to fnd out suitable management optons against such climatc variability, to boost up the productvity. In this study DSSAT 4.5 model was used to simulate the potental yield of wheat for Nadia district for 30 years (1982 to 2011). The long term district wheat yield was also collected for its comparison. The atainable yield with proper agronomic management practces was collected from research experiment conducted at Bidhan Chndra Krishi Viswavidyalaya, for yield gap analysis. Wheat yield was also simulated under fve number of irrigaton treatments. Result revealed that the potental yield ranges from 5101 to 10128 kg ha -1 with an average of 8458 kg ha -1 . The average yield produced in research feld was 4151 kg ha -1 and long term average actual district yield was 2316 kg ha -1 . Thus, there is ample scope to reduce the yield gap by around 80% to reach the atainable (research) yield, only through optmizaton of diferent crop management techniques. The result of the irrigaton experiment showed that wheat yield increased with increase in number of irrigatons. But exceptonally, three number of irrigatons produced less yield than that of two numbers of irrigaton due to water stress in critcal crop growth period. 1. Introducton Rice and wheat are two major food crops in India in general and West Bengal (WB) in partcular. Therefore, emphasis should be given on improving and sustaining the productvity of these crops towards food security of this state (Sarkar et al., 2013). Afer ‘Green Revoluton’ higher productvity hence higher proftability leads towards higher area expansion under wheat crop in diferent district under WB up to the end of 1980s (Pal and Mukhopadhyay, 1980), follo wed by drastc reducton of area during 90s’ and remained almost stable during recent year (Economic review, 2011−12). But overall productvity of the wheat crop increased gradually with some inter-year variability due to weather fuctuaton. Temperature is one of the important weather elements that regulate the growth and yield of many crops (Kurek et al., 2007). High temperature stress is an important yield limitng factor in wheat in most of the wheat growing areas (Prasad et al., 2008). In India studies have also shown a trend for increasing air temperature (Sing and Sontakke, 2002). The rainfall amount in October and November month has shown an increasing trend during 1990−2000 compared to earlier years (Mukherjee and Banerjee, 2009), thus there is a chance of late sowing of winter wheat because of delay in land preparaton. On the other hand, share of irrigaton to agriculture is diminishing very quickly. Uneven distributon of rainfall and extreme events aggravated the situaton. The biggest threat to sustain the rice-wheat productvity in south Asia is water shortage during critcal crop growth stages (Subhas and Mohan, 2012). Thus, weather abnormality, untmely sowing, lack of irrigaton and low fertlizer use is becoming the major constraints for wheat cultvaton in WB situaton. 2. Materials and Methods 2.1. Study area The study was conducted in Nadia district, which falls under New Alluvial Zone of West Bengal and characterised by 1400 mm annual rainfall with 31.9 and 20.4 °C average annual maximum and minimum temperature. Wheat growing season wheat, climatc variability, Irrigaton, DSSAT Keywords: Abstract Article History Manuscript No. AR781 Received in 15 th January, 2017 Received in revised form 28 th May, 2017 Accepted in fnal form 6 th June, 2017 A. Mukherjee e-mail: asismukherjee@gmail.com Corresponding Author Doi: HTTPS://DOI.ORG/10.23910/IJBSM/2017.8.3.1781 International Journal of Bio-resource and Stress Management 2017, 8(3):473-476 Short Research 473