COTTON PRODUCTION ESTIMATION USING IRS-1B AND METEOROLOGICAL DATA

An approach to estimate cotton production at district level by estimat ing cotton acreage from IRS-1B multispectral data and predicting yield from meteorological data has been described. The meteorological data (fortnightly rainfall and climatic potential evapotranspiration) have been used to estimate fortnightly actual evapotranspiration (AET) usin g simplified soil moisture budgeting technique. Fortnightly AET values have been stepwise regressed with yield to get the final model which is used for yield prediction. Cotton acreage, yield and production hav e been estimated for the year 1992-93.