The Pune agricultural division that covers Pune, Ahmednagar and Solapur districts, has topped in the rabi crop plantation activities in the
state.
"The division has reported 45 per cent of rabi crop plantation on over 9.26 lakh hectares of land out of 20.56 lakh hectares of total rabi land. This is the highest in the state," Prabhakar Deshmukh, agriculture commissioner of Maharashtra, told TOI.
The state has 128.46 lakh hectares of kharif land and 53.66 lakh hectares of rabi land. Across the state, rabi crop cultivation process has been started on 10.64 lakh hectare land. The major rabi crops in the state are sorghum, safflower (kardai) and gram (harbhara), Deshmukh said.
Of the eight agricultural divisions in the state, Konkan, Nashik and Nagpur divisions have not reported any rabi farming activity, because of their climatic conditions. Kolhapur division has reported 10 per cent plantation on 4.54 lakh hectares of land. In other divisions, the rabi plantation figures are: Aurangabad 0.66 lakh hectare (of the total 8.74 lakh hectare rabi land), Latur 0.14 lakh hectare (6.64 hectare), and Amravati 0.13 lakh hectare (2.18 hectare).