Climate Change and Hill Agriculture in Northwest Himalaya

Northwest Himalayan agriculture is strongly influenced by climate change/variability, and the agriculture is often affected due to several climatic/weather components. This chapter reviews the magnitude of climate change in few important places in terms of change in temperatures, rainfall and glaciers retreat. Due to the fragile nature of mountain ecosystem, the impact of climate change/variability is higher, and this severity can be seen through the different biotic, abiotic stresses. Because of changes in climatic conditions, the microclimate of crop ecosystem is expected to change, which influences the pest and disease spectrum and also its dynamics. The changing climate may favour some pests (sucking pest) and diseases (wheat yellow rust, rice blast, etc.) and suppress some others. New pest (rice brown plant hopper) and disease (maize Phyllosticta and zonate leaf spot) infestations are already been reported in Himalayan hills. The shift in crop season may influence the availability and abundance of pollinators which is a major concern for pollination in cross-pollinated crops. Impact assessment of climatic components with rice-wheat cropping system showed that the higher mean, maximum and minimum temperatures during winter season resulted in poor wheat grain yield, whilst lower mean, maximum and minimum temperatures resulted in poor rice grain yield. Due to weather variability, the drought, cold and terminal heat stresses and extreme weather events often resulted in severe yield losses in rice, garden pea, wheat, ragi, lentil, bhindi, rajmash, French bean, buckwheat and horse gram. Perhaps, most seriously, due to the observed and predicted climate change, there is high uncertainty in crop production in the near future, and adequate attention has to be given to sustain the NW Himalayan agriculture.