Acknowledgement_Mahak Bhatia_Thesis

Abstract

Rajasthan is the largest state in India located at western part of country between 23°30’ and 30°11’ north latitude and 69°29’ and 78°17’ east longitude. The state shares its boundary with 5 other states. The western part of the state is bounded by the stretches of Thar Desert and the Aravalli Range. The Aravalli Range acts as a barrier causing variation in climatic conditions. Based on agro climatic parameters; rainfall, temperature and topography the state has been divided into 10 zones. The state’s arid topography, varying weather conditions and inadequate availability of irrigational water resources makes the agricultural scenario complex. Traditionally, being practiced from years the growers in every cultivating season face challenge to overcome the constraints for generating optimized farm revenues. To subdue these losses a mathematical model is being formulated. The formulation supports the decision maker to evaluate the niche regions such that the variations would be incorporated to improve the feasibility of decision space. Mathematical tools and techniques will come up with the problem output that will provide a scientific basis to the decisions. However, there are bounteous farm parameters that are difficult to represent in mathematical form posing a challenge to formulate/construct a mathematical model. Thus, the research work conducted is an effort to develop a mathematical model to improvise the farm revenues and reduce the risk involved in sector. Therefore, the study is taken up to identify the farm parameters in Rajasthan that impact the crop yield and hence the revenues. For the formulation of mathematical model selection of decision variables to evaluate the optimality of objective function is quite a challenging task. For determining the optimal crop output there are several controllable and un-controllable farm parameters impacting the crop productivity making it difficult for the decision makers to choose the variables that greatly influence the output.