The Agriculture Ministry has lowered its estimates of Rabi crop damage due to unseasonal rainfall and hailstorms through the first half of March.

The damaged area, according to an official release on Thursday, stood at 106.73 lakh hectares (lh), opposed to 181 lh, as communicated to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley by Radha Mohan Singh, the Agriculture Minister, earlier this week.

Rajasthan topped the list of 14 affected States with 45.53 lh destroyed, followed by Uttar Pradesh which had 26.79 lh under Rabi crop coverage damaged. Haryana (18.75 lh), Madhya Pradesh (5.7 lh), Maharashtra (3.95 lh), Punjab (2.94 lh), Himachal Pradesh (1.52 lh) and West Bengal (48,500 hectares), were among the other States that bore the brunt of western disturbances.

Specific crops

The main crops affected were wheat, pulses, mustard, fruits and vegetables, and spices such as isabgol, cumin and coriander.

In Gujarat, 9,000 hectares under cumin and 2,400 hectares under coriander had been damaged while in Rajasthan 2.41 lh of cumin, 1.19 lh under isabgol and 1.13 lh under coriander, had been damaged.

The latter, also the largest mustard growing State, had 15.05 lh under the crop destroyed while it 5.322 lh under pulses were damaged. Mustard was also destroyed in UP (1.52 lh) and Haryana (1.2 lh).

Extensive damage to the wheat crop was reported in UP (21.18 lh), Rajasthan (17.04 lh), Punjab (2.6 lh), Madhya Pradesh (2.4 lh), Himachal Pradesh (1.5 lh), and Jammu & Kashmir (0.60 lh).

Maharashtra and Kerala reported widespread horticultural damage with the former having area under onion, mango, grapes, pomegranate and cashewnut being affected, while in the latter, nearly 111 hectares of the banana crop and 60 hectares of vegetables had been damaged.

Large affected areas with vegetable crops have also been reported in J&K (0.25 lh) and Punjab (0.10 lh).

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