A shortage of di-ammonium Phosphate (DAP), a key fertiliser, during the current rabi sowing season in major mustard-producing States such as Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh is unlikely to impact the yield of the winter-grown oilseed crop as farmers have used single super sulphate (SSP) as alternative.

“Farmers have applied SSP and it is more than enough even if they did not get DAP in preparing the field before sowing mustard,” said Dhiraj Singh, a former director of Bharatpur-based Directorate of Rapeseed Mustard Research (DRMR) under Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR).

He said the weather has been very conducive so far and the growth of the plant sown in the last week of September being good. “Only concern is the price, whether farmers will get the expected rates when the crop will start coming to mandis from February-March after harvest,” Singh told businessline.

There has been no significant factor till now that could have affected mustard crop production, said Akhilesh Jain, co-founder, of Agrotech India. “The crop production is expected to be good this year if the weather does not bring extreme events like hailstorms over the next couple of months,”Jain said.

Coverage up 14%

According to Agriculture Ministry’s data, the total acreage under rapeseed-mustard was up by 14 per cent at 70.89 lakh hectares (lh) as of November 25 against 61.96 lh a year ago. The coverage does not include data from Haryana, where mustard is normally planted around 6-7 lh. In Rajasthan, the largest producer, the acreage was higher by 9.6 per cent at 37.16 lh, while in Madhya Pradesh the area is up by 24.7 per cent at 12.53 lh and in Uttar Pradesh by 1.2 per cent at 11.79 lh until last week.

Seen on the other side on the issue of environmental release of genetically modified (GM) mustard variety DMH-11, Singh said the yield gap is so high between States that some improvement can raise the production substantially and it is “doable”. He cited that the productivity in Haryana an Gujarat is around 2 tonne per hectare whereas it is less than 1.5 tonne in UP, around 1.7 tonne in Rajasthan and MP.

In Rajasthan itself, the gap was wide among districts, Singh said and added that the average five-year (2015-20) productivity in Pali was 1.02 tonne/hectare whereas it was 1.93 t/ha in Jaipur.

Yield gap

The current yield gap in mustard is 27 per cent and the government has set a target to bring it down to 15 per cent by 2025-26. “Reducing the yield gap to 20 per cent in the next five years may lead to 13-14 mt of additional production of all the oilseeds (~ 3-4 mt of edible oils) without increasing the sowing area,” according to an official estimate. The average yield gap in oilseeds is about 60 per cent.

India’s mustard production was estimated at 11.75 million tonnes (mt) in 2021-22, up by 15 per cent from 10.21 mt in the previous year. The total oilseeds output was at 37.7 mt in 2022-23.

According to Fertiliser Ministry data, the all-India requirement of DAP was 18.39 lakh tonnes (lt) in October, whereas the availability was 15.06 lt. In Rajasthan, government data show, the requirement was 2 lt of DAP and the availability was 1.65 lt. In UP, the DAP demand was 5 lt whereas supplies were 3.56 lt and in MP the requirement was 4 lt against which the availability was 2.25 lt.

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