India's wheat output could fall by 5 per cent this year

New Delhi: India's wheat output prospects in 2015 appeared to have been hit by unseasonal rains during the harvest season, farm minister Radha Mohan Singh said on Tuesday.

"There's some initial reports that suggest wheat output could drop by 4-5 percent due to unseasonal rains," Singh told a conference of state representatives. In February, the farm ministry's initial estimate put this year's wheat production in the world's No. 2 producer at 95.76 million tonnes compared with 95.85 million tonnes in 2014. India bought up to 80,000 tonnes of Australian wheat in recent deals, the biggest such imports by the country in five years due to unseasonal rains.