Estimation of cotton yield at tehsil level using double sampling approach under stratified two stage sampling design framework

Abstract

General Crop Estimation Surveys (GCES) Scheme is adopted in all the states of country to estimate crop yield at higher level (state, district). With progress in planning in agriculture, especially in case of the cotton crop, we need estimate of cotton crop yield at tehsil/block level with the desired degree of precision. Application of GCES as such, as tehsil/block level with the same number of crop cutting experiments (CCEs) may yield estimates with less degree of precision. If the simple crop-cutting approach is to be adopted directly for this purpose, the present number of crop cutting experiments will have to be increased significantly. In such case, use of information getting from auxiliary variable correlated with variable under study may increase the degree of precision of estimates at tehsil level. In this study, double sampling regression approach under stratified two stage sampling design framework has been proposed for estimation of the average yield of cotton at the tehsil level using the picking having highest correlation with total yield as auxiliary variable.