India May Have Record Wheat Harvest on Crop Area, Cold Weather

The wheat harvest in India, the world's second-biggest grower, may exceed last year's record as farmers plant the crop to a bigger area and cold weather in the main growing regions improves yields, a government official said.

Production may be higher than 80.58 million metric tons gathered last year, said S.S. Singh, head of the state-owned Directorate of Wheat Research. Wheat, sown in October, accounts for 70 percent of the nation's winter-sown grain output.

A record crop for a second year may help Prime Minister Manmohan Singh make up for drought-damaged harvests of rice and oilseeds that's pushed food inflation to near an 11-year high. World wheat production, in comparison, is estimated to fall in 2010-11, causing a small drop in global stockpiles of the grain, the International Grains Council said last month.

Indian farmers planted wheat across 26.07 million hectares (64.4 million acres) as of Dec. 31, compared with 25.56 million hectares a year earlier, the farm ministry said Jan. 1. The area may exceed last year's 27.85 million hectares, Singh said in an interview today.

"Some unsown paddy area will be sown to wheat and sowing is still going on in Uttar Pradesh," he said, referring the country's northern state. "The cold wave is good for the crop and it will increase productivity."

Temperatures in north India, including the biggest wheat- growing states of Punjab and Haryana, last week fell as low as 0.3 degrees Celsius, the Press Trust of India reported, citing the weather office. The cold wave has so far claimed 120 lives, the agency reported today.