Sowing to paddy declined by 2.7 per cent to 12.80 lakh hectares from 13.16 lakh hectares, while area under nutritious/coarse grains stood at 82,000 hectares as against 50,000 hectares a year ago. Photo Courtesy: Shiv Kumar Pushpakar
Having more area under groundnut and maize has helped the summer season area (Zaid) Sowing to get an early head start compared to the year-ago period. Preliminary data shows that the area under pulses is slightly higher, but the area under paddy is slightly less than last year.
Sowing of summer crops, which will end by May, reached 15.18 lakh hectares (LH) as of February 13, up 3 per cent from 14.75 lakh hectares reported in the year-ago period. Zaid The government said sowing season is going well, as the reservoir level is now 10 percent higher than last year. Zaid crops are grown before Kharif sowing and after Rabi crops.
The area covered under summer crop was earlier included under Kharif or Rabi season, but a few years ago, it was decided to start collecting the data separately. The average coverage of the last five years under summer crops is 75.37 lakh hours, while in 2024-25 the area reached a record high of 83.92 lakh hours. The share of summer crops in the total food grain production of 357.73 million tonnes in 2024-25 was 19.11 million tonnes (mt) or 5.3 per cent.
Moong coverage
According to the weekly update released by the Agriculture Ministry, sowing of paddy declined by 2.7 per cent to 12.80 lakh hectares from 13.16 lakh hectares, while area under nutri/coarse grains stood at 82,000 hectares as against 50,000 hectares a year ago. Among nutri/coarse cereals, area under maize has increased from 0.48 lakh hours to 0.63 lakh hours, while jowar has reached 0.03 lakh hours, ragi at 0.09 lakh hours and millet at 0.06 lakh hours as on February 13.
Area under summer pulses increased to 0.58 lakh hours from 0.50 lakh hours, with coverage of moong (moong) reaching 0.44 lakh hours and coverage of urad (urad urad) reaching 0.10 lakh hours. Major producers of summer pulses are Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat. Summer pulses are important to compensate when kharif crops decline.
Kharif pulses production is estimated to increase from 7.73 million tonnes in 2024-25 to 7.41 million tonnes in 2025-26.
more storage
The oilseeds sector is also up by 0.59 lakh hours at 0.99 lakh hours and includes groundnut at 0.87 lakh hours and sunflower and sesame both at 0.06 lakh hours.
Meanwhile, storage in India’s 166 major reservoirs dropped to 64 per cent of capacity last week, while 28 per cent of them had levels above 80 per cent.
According to the Central Water Commission (CWC), storage in major reservoirs has declined to 118.140 billion cubic meters (BCM) against the capacity of 183.565 BCM, 10 per cent more than a year ago and 25 per cent more than normal.
While four reservoirs are brimming, the level in 11 was above 90 per cent and in 32, it was above 80 per cent. On the other hand, storage in 30 reservoirs was less than 50 percent.
Published on February 18, 2026
