Good rains lashing across the country, barring the southern peninsula, have ensured steadfast progress in kharif sowing, which covered an acreage of 791.34 lakh hectares (ha) at the end of the week, said a release from the Agri Ministry on Friday. The acreage covered in the corresponding week in the previous year was 765.79 lakh ha.

While rice transplantation progressed to 216.23 lakh ha, about 40 lakh ha over the previous week, pulses, coarse cereals and cotton maintained an impressive increase in area under cultivation as compared to not just the corresponding previous year period but also over the normal for the week.

The acreage of pulses in particular, at 114.88 lakh ha, was 42.47 per cent more than the normal for the week historically. The spectacular increase was mainly due to renewed interest in pulses shown by farmers in Rajasthan, who planted them in an additional 15.90 lakh ha, and in Madhya Pradesh, where an extra 11.25 lakh ha was covered by pulses.

While the area under tur cultivation at 34.88 lakh ha is 15 per cent less than last year, urad is grown over 34 lakh ha, which is 35 per cent more.

Coarse cereals and cotton, on the other hand, have covered an area of 150 lakh ha and 111.55 lakh ha respectively.

The acreage under oilseeds at 142.31 lakh ha is marginally lesser than the previous year. Last year, by this time, oilseeds were grown over an area of 156.65 lakh ha. Both groundnut and soyabean cultivation are down by more than 10 per cent as compared to the corresponding week last year.

The increase in paddy acreage that comes mainly from Bihar (4.13 lakh ha), Madhya Pradesh (3.05 lakh ha), Haryana (1.79 lakh ha) and Gujarat (1.39 lakh ha) has in a way compensated a decrease in transplantation in Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and flood-hit Assam.