Agriculture trend and strategies to improve the agriculture under limited resource conditions

The major focus of the present study is to assess the productivity gap and production shortfalls, to suggest the location specific varieties, technologies, input and resource management to bring down the yield gap. The results indicated that the annual growth rates were negative for cotton (-13.24 per cent), sunflower (- 6.12 per cent) paddy (-1.8 per cent), cumbu(-3.8 per cent), cholam (-1.17 per cent) and gingelly (-3.14 per cent) and it was positive in case of maize (24.81 per cent), greengram (10.73 per cent), coconut (4.10 per cent), chillies (2.99 per cent), blackgram (2.45 per cent) and banana (1.78 per cent). The yield gap for paddy varies from 14 per cent to 36 per cent, pulse crop with 56 per cent to 67 per cent, oil seed crops with 32.46 per cent to 72.15 per cent and cotton crop with 66.33 to 80.95 per cent. The suggested potential varieties of paddy to reduce the yield gap are ADT 36, ASD 16, ADT 39, ASD 18 and MDU 5 and for blackgram Vamban 4 and Vamban 5.