Vidarbha: the Nagpur orange belt, in facts.

Facts, with their sources

Each fact names the public document it comes from and the year of its data. Where two official sources disagree, both are shown.

• Vidarbha has 11 districts, in two agro-climatic zones: Central Vidarbha and Eastern Vidarbha.Source: Dr. PDKV, Akola, agrometeorology (AICRPAM) page · Date: page undated, read 17 Oct 2026
• Annual rainfall runs from 700 to 950 mm in the west to more than 1250 mm in the east. Most rain falls in the south-west monsoon, June to September, and July and August are the wettest months.Source: Dr. PDKV, Akola, agrometeorology (AICRPAM) page · Date: page undated, read 17 Oct 2026
• The main kharif crops are cotton, soybean, pigeonpea, green gram and black gram; the main rabi crops are chickpea, safflower and sunflower. Almost all cotton (99 per cent) is rainfed.Source: Dr. PDKV, Akola, agrometeorology (AICRPAM) page · Date: page undated, read 17 Oct 2026
• Amravati and Nagpur districts hold about 80 per cent of Maharashtra's mandarin orchard area: 48.88 per cent and 31.45 per cent.Source: Plant Archives 25(1), ICAR-CCRI authors, citing Wankhede et al. 2017 · Date: 2025
• Nagpur Orange is a registered Geographical Indication: application no. 385, filed by Dr. PDKV, Akola; certificate no. 215 dated 31 March 2014.Source: APEDA, registered GIs of Maharashtra · Date: 2014 registration
• Nagpur orange has two seasons: ambia bahar fruit from January and February flowers, picked from October to December, and mrig bahar fruit from June and July flowers, in the market in February and March.Source: Nagpur Orange GI application no. 385 (Dr. PDKV); ICAR-CCRI calendar of operations · Date: GI filed 2012

The 11 districts of Vidarbha, side by side

Average rainfall from CHIRPS (1991 to 2020) and the greenest and barest month of each district's cropland in the Sentinel-2 record from October 2025 to September 2026, worked out the same way for every district.

Source: CHIRPS v2.0 rainfall (Climate Hazards Center, UC Santa Barbara; Funk et al. 2015), averaged over the area by VarshaKrishi. It is a satellite-and-rain-gauge estimate, so it differs from official normals, which use other years and stations. Source: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel-2 data 2025-2026 (via the Microsoft Planetary Computer), processed by VarshaKrishi; cropland mask: ESA WorldCover 2021. NDVI runs from about 0.1 for bare soil to about 0.8 for a dense green crop. Orchards mapped as tree cover are not in this curve. Download the data (CSV)