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India Wheat output may touch record levels: Agri Expert

India’s wheat production may touch record levels this year, according to an expert. The sowing area is low but if the weather is favourable the output could spike to 100million tonnes this year, Indu Sharma, head of the Directorate of Wheat Research, told The Economic Times.

“If there is no bad weather situation, wheat productivity should be 3.2 tonne per hectare, an increase of 10% over the previous year,” said Indu Sharma.

India is the world’s second largest wheat producer. The South Asian country produced 95.9 million tonnes of wheat on 29.43 hectares of land in 2013-14.

As per Rabi Crops data released by Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Ministry of Agriculture, total area coverage as on January 2 under Rabi crops moves to 552.82 lakh hectares while last year’s sowing area was at 579.63 lakh hectare.

Wheat’s sowing area is at 293.16 lakh hectares as compared to last year’s 294.30 lakh hectares. The area under sowing of total Coarse cereals is at 51.17 lakh hectares as compared to last year’s 56.18 lakh hectares.

India recently hiked the minimum support price (MSP) of Wheat by Rs 50 to Rs 1,400 per quintal. MSP is the rate at which the government purchases farm produce.
Source: Commodity Online