The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Kharif sowing up due to widespread rain

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Tuesday, Jul 22, 2008
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Kharif sowing up due to widespread rain

Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD: A somewhat prolonged dry spell in State was broken by fairly widespread rain in the past few days owing to an off-shore trough between Karnataka and Kerala coasts.

Mangalagiri in Guntur district and Penukonda in Anantapur recorded a very rainfall of 13 cm and 9 cm respectively, the other day, and Kamareddy in Nizamabad kept up the trend by reporting 8 cm on Monday.

A bulletin released by Disaster Management Department revealed that the State’s overall rainfall deficit which touched 50 per cent on Saturday dropped to 41 per cent on Monday.

The deficit of Telangana and Rayalaseema that stood at 54 per cent each, tumbled to 47 per cent and 48 per cent respectively. Similarly, coastal Andhra’s shortfall was reduced to 26 per cent from 40 per cent.

Agriculture Minister N . Raghuveera Reddy announced that as a result of this improvement, 23.64 lakh hectares of kharif area was sown by July 16 as against normal extent 36.5 lakh ha by this time of the season—a 64 per cent achievement.

This fell short of only 2 per cent compared to last year’s 66 per cent.

Crops

He said the normal extents of paddy, soyabean, cotton and blackgram crops had been fully covered, without shortfall.

He hoped that the situation would improve further as moderate to heavy rain was in store for the State as forecast by weathermen towards end of July.

The daily chart of the Irrigation Department indicated that reservoirs, however, did not get inflows as there were no rains in the catchment areas.

In view of this, cloud-seeding operations will commence from Hyderabad and Anantapur for these areas from July 24.

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