**3. Cropping pattern in the drought-affected zones**

Cropping pattern of an area is normally determined by its climatic parameters related to a particular time of a year. Bangladesh is situated in subtropical region giving it a suitable temperature range which makes it favorable for year round crop cultivation. However, Bangladesh has a complex and intensively diverse cropping pattern and that pattern is evolving and changing at a continuous basis [48]. Depending on cultural method, the whole crop-growing period of Bangladesh is distributed into two major seasons i.e. Kharif season and Rabi season. Beside these two, there is a transitional season named pre-kharif (shown in **Table 2**) [49]. Kharif crops like rice, jute, maize, millets etc. are grown in Kharif season and Rabi crops like wheat, mustard, chickpea, lentil etc. are grown during Rabi season [25].

In Bangladesh, all the cropping season are more or less affected by drought. But pre-monsoon and post-monsoon period are mostly prone to drought events [25]. Kharif drought negatively affects the critical reproductive stage of transplanted Aman rice where all of the Rabi crops are affected by pre-kharif/rabi droughts [4]. Assessment of drought in northern area of Bangladesh for the period between 1971 and 2008 reveals that most extreme drought conditions have been experienced in Rabi season including pre-monsoon [24]. Increasing trend in precipitation change in Bangladesh causes more rainfall in monsoon and less rainfall in winter resulting in droughts in winter season. Thus yield of various crops like HYV boro rice, aus rice, wheat, sugarcane, pulses and potatoes growing in Rabi and pre-kharif season are badly affected by droughts [35, 50]. In recent decades, the drought condition in northwestern Bangladesh severely affected the production of rice and all Rabi crops


#### **Table 2.**

*Major cropping seasons in Bangladesh.*

*Drought Affected Wheat Production in Bangladesh and Breeding Strategies for Drought Tolerance DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.95283*

(wheat, tobacco, sugarcane etc.) [25]. Rice-rice, rice-wheat and rice-maize are the dominating cropping patterns in Bangladesh in the drought regions [51, 52]. In late October to early November, certain areas of lands in Bangladesh become empty because of using short duration rice varieties which is appropriate for wheat cultivation [4]. For decades, wheat is grown in wheat-fallow-T. aman rice cropping pattern in north-western part of Bangladesh with some exceptions like wheat-jute-T. aman rice cropping pattern [53].
