Weather Based Cotton Yield Forecasting Models for South Gujarat Region

An attempt has been made to developed the pre - harvesting forecasting models for cotton yields using (1995-2020) weather and yield data for Bharuch and Surat districts respectively. Models were validated for three years (2018-2020). Good agreements have been realized between actual and predicted yield with similar trends of deviation at pre - harvest stage. R2 values were 0.78 to 0.93 for both districts and stages respectively. Hence, these models can be used for forecasting cotton yield in mid – season (F1) and pre - harvest stage (F2) which is very useful to government authorities to plan the sugarcane production more efficiently. The estimated cotton yields during kharif, the year 2022 were 769 kg/ha and 870 kg/ha for F1 & F2 stage in Bharuch district and 1209 kg/ha and 1454 kg/ha for F1 & F2 stage in Surat district, respectively.