Abstract

                                Agriculture has been rightly termed as India's soul, the only sector holding a positive GDP even during the COVID 19 pandemic. Such an important sector is vulnerable to several factors, such as climate change, land use changes, market fluctuations, and other socio-economic factors. The climatic factors are major game changers in Agricultural production, especially with rainfall being the decider of crop selection and cropping pattern, whereas Potential Evapotranspiration is mandatory to gain knowledge on the crop performance. Thus, understanding rainfall and Potential Evapotranspiration owes us the benefit of determining the Length of the growing period (LGP), which could be used in crop selection. The LGP was analyzed from gridded APHRODITE data. The LGP analysis for three blocks in the Virudhunagar district of Tamilnadu showed that there had been 17-18 weeks of growing period differing within the blocks. Crop selection needs to be accommodated within this growing period, and the major rainfed blocks could opt for pulses and millets

Key words : Length of growing period (LGP); Block level analysis; APHRODITE data; Virudhunagar district