Achievements

• Daily rainfall data for 9 districts in West Bengal were analysed to derive information on assured rainfall, initial and conditional probabilities of rainfall, west and dry spells during consecutive weeks, length of growing season through forward and backward accumulation, soil water balance, moisture adequacy index
   
• Studies on crop-weather relationships with upland rice showed that pre-harvest forecast of grain yield could be made using (a) minimum temperature from panicle initiation to first anthesis stage (b) mean maximum temperature from emergence to panicle initiation (c) mean bright sunshine hours from panicle initiation to first anthesis and (d) cumulative pan evaporation from anthesis to maturity.
   
• Predictive models of Leaf area index were developed using fractional light interception and accumulated growing degree days. Light extinction coefficients were estimated using leaf area index, incident and transmitted light in the canopy at different growth stages.
   
• Accumulated evaluation, sunshine hours, diumal variation in tempertature from sowing  were utilized for estimating drymatter content, partioning  of dry matter, leaf area index. Panicle dry matter could be estimated using  accumulation of weather parameters 45 days after sowing.
   
• Regressions were established between accumulated incident PAR and total dry mater in mustard crop.