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Strengthening the early warning system to forecast extreme weather and provide action-oriented advisories may increase rice yield as well as enhance the income of the farmers through minimizing risks and losses, if proper use of the generated advisory is ensured. This study assessed the importance and impact of weather forecast based advisory service (WFBAS) in Bangladesh. Literature review and field experimental data were used in a sensitivity analysis to show the impact of WFBAS on rice production. Available literatures suggested that the weather based advisory service would enhance rice yield by around 6.7-10%, but the experimental findings revealed that yield advantage could be 21.48%. Besides, the adoption of this technology would reduce the cost of cultivation by 12%, whereas the aggregate impact would increase the farmers’ profit by 25%. In the sensitivity study, we considered the production and price of Aman and Boro seasons (actual and government procured prices for 2018-19) and assumed only 6.70% yield increase with 5% farmers adopting of WFBAS. As such, additional 0.172 million tons will be added to the national rough rice production and thus the nation will be benefited by 3143 million Bangladeshi taka (BDT) at the actual farmgate price and it would be 4478 million BDT at the government procured price. The return on one BDT investment in this technology would be 51-73 BDT based on actual and procured prices. The projection showed enhenced production of the rough rice at 0.119 million tons and 0.214 million tons by 2025 and 2030, on which the additional return would be BDT 2441 and BDT 5223 million at the projected actual farmgate price and BDT 3522 and BDT 6979 million at the projected Government procured price, respectively. Hence, the successful implementation of the WFBAS will help to develop resilient rice farming communities, minimize livelihood risk, reduce the cost of production, utilize resources efficienty, and enable the farmers to take maximum benefit from favorable weather conditions through improved agricultural extension services. Finally, the enhanced yield and loss reduction will help to achieve the target of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) by 2030 through sustaining rice production in Bangladesh under changing climate. Bangladesh Rice J. 25 (1) : 51-74, 2021

Crop-cut is a widely used and well accepted procedure for estimating rice yield. This yield is then multiplied by the area planted under rice cultivation to determine rice production of the country. In Bangladesh, crop-cut is used to estimate transplanted rice yield. Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) and Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) as the public agencies provide estimate on area and production of rice but they use different methods of crop-cut. The estimates of these two agencies on area and production of rice are different posing a question to the users on the reliability of the estimates. An attempt has been made with the objective to formulate a protocol that provides reliable and unique estimates on rice area and production. It is suggested to make at least three cuts in each plot to minimize the chance of over or under estimation of the whole plot yield and the radius of the circle should be 178.5cm so that the cut area becomes 10 m2 in order to easy conversion of the crop-cut yield to t ha-1.Bangladesh Rice j. 2016, 20(1): 11-16

Forecasting of rice area and production is an essential procedure in supporting policy decision regarding food security and environmental issues. The main aim of this paper is to forecast Aus rice area and production in Bangladesh. Box-Jenkins Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) time-series methodology is considered for modeling and forecasting country's Aus rice area and production data commencing from 1971-72 to 2013-14. It was observed that ARIMA (1, 1, 5) and ARIMA (1, 1, 4) model were performed better than the other ARIMA models for forecasting Aus area and production respectively. The Aus rice areas were forecasted 1041.12 and 499.31 thousand hectares and for production it was 2059.642 and 1781.545 thousand metric tons in 2014-15 and 2023-24 respectively. The forecasted Aus rice area and production both were showed a decreasing trend. Government should create an enabling environment to develop HYV rice varieties for Aus rice crop to ensure ongoing food security by increasing cultivated area and production.Bangladesh Rice j. 2016, 20(1): 1-10