Crop-Weather Relationship: A Composite Weather Index Approach for Apple Yield Analysis

Multiple regression analysis has been widely use to examine the impact of weather on crop yield, but with little success because annual rainfall has almost invariably been used as a measure of the weather conditions. The purpose of this paper is to propose a composite weather index which takes into account all aspects of weather, treating it as a multidimensional phenomenon. This index is then used to explain variations in the yield of apple crop in four districts of Himachal Pradesh.