The aim of this paper is to delineate maize planning regions in Himachal Pradesh. For achieving this goal, ten indicators are selected and super imposed technique is used for demarcating the maize planning regions. Selected indicators are relief, landform regions, annual rainfall, soil types, extent of irrigation, sources of irrigation, area under maize crop, ranking of maize, maize yield (kg./hectare), productivity levels. Thus, on the basis of these indicators three maize planning regions are demarcated namely significant maize planning region, diminishing maize planning region and problematic maize planning region. The significant maize planning region contains north-western and central-western parts of the study region and has 37 percent of total occurrences. Geo-climatic conditions and socio-economic environment are favorable for maize cultivation. While in diminishing maize planning region, there are 48 percent of total occurrences. Though geo-climatic conditions are favorable but it faces competition from crops like rice, fruits, vegetables, etc. and as a result the area under maize is declining. In case of problematic maize planning region, which lies in high altitude areas above 3000 m. have problematic geo-climatic conditions like mountains topography, low temperature, heavy snowfall, short crop growing period, etc. which are not ideal for maize cultivation, thus farmers prefer vegetables and fruits during summer season, because of short crop growing season. It is also observed that in the study area, maize is facing problems like poor marketing system, exploitation by private traders, lack of agricultural extension services, insufficient maize processing plants, low yield per unit area, need of more improved short growing period seeds of maize, etc. For healthy maize production, government should solve these problems, so that Himachal Pradesh can occupy an honorable place among major maize producing states of India. The study is based on secondary sources of data and unit of study is tehsil. The study has one time period of 2023-24. Simple choropleth method is applied for preparing the map.

Planning Region, Delineation, Yield, Environment, Geo-Climatic Conditions, Extension Services