Spatial Analysis of Yield Trends and Impact of Temperature for Wheat Crop Across Indian Districts

Wheat is an important agricultural crop globally. India ranks second in the world, accounting for ~ 14% of global wheat production. Wheat provides food and livelihood to a large Indian population. India would require improving its wheat yield significantly to feed the growing population. Ascertaining the wheat yield trends and their sensitivity to rising temperatures is crucial to enable sustainable wheat production, ensuring a continuous food supply. India is a diverse and vast country. One size fit to all approach seems not to offer practical and workable solutions. Therefore, it is essential to perform finer resolution analysis to identify the smallest possible administrative units (districts) to implement adaptation strategies. This study presents the spatial distribution of wheat yield trends and the impact of temperature on wheat yield across Indian districts. The key differentiating aspect of the present work is the district-level analysis compared to state-of-the-art state-level analysis in the earlier literature. We developed detailed wheat yield and temperature statistics of 50 years (1966–2015) by employing various statistical models. The present study’s critical findings over the state-of-the-art research work are: (1) Wheat yield is not improving in 69 out of 175 districts across eight major wheat-producing Indian states. 175 districts included in the analysis constitute ~ 94% of the total wheat harvested area in India, and the 69 identified districts constitute ~ 48.3% of the total wheat harvested area. The stagnation in wheat yield is prominent in Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Punjab. (2) Mean temperature rise has negatively impacted wheat yield in 145 districts (~ 76.5% of the total wheat harvested area), causing ~ 251 kg/ha (~ 16%) yield loss in statistically significant districts. The rigorous and robust methodology in this paper ensures the validity of findings and provides higher confidence in utilizing the findings in policymaking. The method and approach used in the study pave the way for similar investigations in the other parts of the world, where wheat is an important crop.