1 Achievements & Challenges in AgroMet Services in India LS Rathore

BROAD CREDENTIALS OF AAS IN 11 TH FIVE YEAR PLAN Integrated Agromet Advisory Service is operating in the country in the fourth year under the 11 th Five Year Plan successfully with an objective to serve the farming community at different parts of the country. The planners as well as the farmers in the country have recognized this flagship programme of Government of India as useful and timely. It is a step to contribute to weather information based crop/livestock management strategies and operations dedicated to enhancing crop production and food security. The main emphasis of the existing AAS system is to collect and organize climate/weather, soil and crop information, and to amalgamate them with weather forecast to assist farmers in taking management decisions. This has helped to develop and apply operational tools to manage weather related uncertainties through agro-meteorological applications for efficient agriculture in rapidly changing environments.

3 AGROMET ADVISORY SERVICES Achievements Since Launching of the Service

IMD Multi-model Ensemble (MME) based District level Forecasts District level (567 districts) weather forecast up to 5 days started from 1st June, weather parameters- - Rainfall- Wind speed and direction - Maximum temperature- Relative humidity - Minimum temperature- Cloud cover In addition, Weekly cumulative rainfall forecast is also provided. IMD, New Delhi generates these products based on a Multi Model Ensemble (MME) technique using forecast products available from number models of India and other countries. These include: T-799 model of European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF); National Centre for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), USA and Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), IMD and NCMRWF models. The products are disseminated to Regional Meteorological Centres and Meteorological Centres of IMD located in different states. These offices undertake value addition to these products and communicate to 130 AgroMet Field Units (AMFUs) located at State Agriculture Universities (SAUs), institutes of Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR), IIT etc.

Qualitative verification of Rainfall Forecast

Ongoing Dissemination under PPP Models

Proposed Dissemination under PPP Models COMMON SERVICE CENTRE MSSRF

Brochure for Awareness Brochure in different languages are prepared for circulation among the users/ farmers NepaliOriyaPunjabiTamilMarathi HindiAssameesGujaratiManipuriEnglish

Display of District Level AAS bulletins in different websites Sr. No.AMFU stationWebsite addresses 1Basar 2Rahuri 3Ambikapur 4Namakkal 5Jodhpur 6Delhi 7Solan 9Dantiwada 10Jorhat Hyderabad 12Palampur 13Raichur 14Srinagar 15Ranchi ww.baujharkhand.org 16Junagarh 17Hissar 18Jagdalpur Kanniwadi 20Modipuram 21Raichur uasraichur.edu.in/info/infofile 22Manipur Contd…

Hosting of interactive website A new interactive website will be launched shortly to provide required information on AAS

Installation of Agro Automatic Weather Stations  Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) at different places in the state and Agro-AWS at Agrometeorological Field Units (AMFU’s) located at State Agriculture Universities (SAUs), institutes of Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR), Indian Institute of Technology under Integrated Agromet Advisory Services (IAAS) are being installed on priority basis.  Installation of Agro-AWS is also under consideration in all the Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVK) in each district in the country.  A number of sensors including soil moisture and soil temperature, leaf temperature, leaf wetness are included in the Agro-AWS

Farmer Awareness Programme Farmer’s Awareness Programme on Weather, Climate and Farmers To make farmers more self-reliant in dealing with weather and climate information. To increase the interaction between farmers and AAS providing agencies i.e. IMD, SAUs, ICAR etc. So far such seminars have been organized at Aduthurai, Anakapalli, Anantpur Arnej, Bhairaich, Bangalore, Pune, Banswara, Basar, Bharatpur, Bhubaneshwar, Brahmavar, Chennai, Coimbatore, Chintapalli, Dapoli, Faizabad, Hiriyur, Hyderabad, Hisar, Jabalpur, Jammu, Jaipur, Jhabua, Jagatial, Jodhpur, Jharnapani, Kakdweep, Kalyani, Kanniwadi, Kolhapur, Kovilpatti, Kumarakom, Khargpur, Leh, Lam, Ludhiana, Jorhat, Mahjian, Maktampur, Lamphelpet, Modipuram, Nammakal, Mulde, Palampur, Pusa, Rajouri, Roorki, Solan, Sonitpur, Srinagar, Thrissur, Udaipur and Tirupathi.

TRAINING As per the demand of the AMFU personnel, Agrimet Division, IMD, Pune organized training for AMFU Scientists entitled “Agrometeorology towards better advisories for serving end users requirement” during the year. 22 AMFU Scientists participated in the course. There is proposal to conduct one more batch of Training for Scientists under AMFU during January 2011.

EXTENSION AND OUT REACH AND COLLECTION OF FEEDBACK FROM FARMING COMMUNITY Regular feedback from farmers, State Agricultural Departments and Agricultural Universities / ICAR and other related Institutes is being collected and processed for further improvement of services. Feedback information are also been collected from Regional and Narrow casting stations of DD, AIR, and FM channels, Krishi Vigyan Kendras, ATMA, CSCs, NGOs, VRCs and VKCs. Officers of the AAS units participated in Kisan Melas to understand the problems of large groups of farmers. For improvement of the agro-advisory bulletins, regular discussion were held among IMD and Agricultural officers at the State AAS unit level and also with scientists in Agricultural Universities / ICAR and other related Institutes

Forecasting Agricultural out put using Space, Agrometeorology and Land based observations (FASAL) Econometry Agro Meteorology Land Observations RS, Mod. Re. Temporal RS, High Re. Single date Conventional Remote Sensing MULTIPLE IN-SEASON FORECAST Pre- Season Early- Season Mid- Season State Pre- Harvest State Cropped area Crop condition Crop acreage Crop yield Revised Incorporating damage

Major Thrust Areas for Improvement  Crop/ Weather/ Soil/ Pest/ Disease  Seamless Weather Forecast (Seasonal, Intra- seasonal, Extended Range)  Real Time information flow  Crop & Pest/ Disease information to knowledge pool.  Outreach/Extension Mechanism  Poor Inter-agency Communication  Participation of District level Agencies  Insufficient Feed-Back

Future Strategies to provide personalised service to Farmers  Creation optimum observational network(automatic weather stations): Approximately 33,000 stations in the country. Establishment of strong network of dissemination under PPP models  Creation of Consortium involving all public DOS, DAC etc-private organisation (TCS, NABARD etc.).  SMS and IVR in the remaining States.  Display board in different Mandis  Integration of all going/proposed R&D projects like mkrishi of TCS etc.for generation of personalised service in the country.  Support to various organisations in R& D projects (like P&D and weather) for preparation of crop and location specific agromet service.  Supply of required inputs for preparation of weather derivative for weather based crop insurance.  Preparation of user friendly interactive website for establishing two way communication with the users.

Future Projection IN AAS  It is proposed to taken up a scheme entitled “Gramin Krishi Seva” for XII five year plan.The main objectives of the proposed project would be:  To improvise the existing District level Agromet Advisory Services (AAS), launched under MoES/IMD under 11 th Five Year Plan, in order to deliver the AAS to farmers at block level with village level advisory.  To provide last mile connectivity to farmers for accessing the personalized agromet advisory services.  To extend the agromet advisory service to the new areas like livestock, fisheries etc.  To establish appropriate dissemination system to reach each and every farmer in the country  To establish an appropriate support system for weather based crop insurance in the country.  To address the climate and climatic variability through high-resolution agromet advisory service system.

INDO-US COLLABORATION IN AAS It is proposed to take a project on “Translation of weather information into Agro-advisories and its effective dissemination to farming community”. Under this collaboration it is being explored for translation of weather information, past & forecast weather, taking into account other information like crop, pests & diseases etc. in framing the advisories. As these advisories are supposed to reach to the farmers in each village of the country, a mechanism will be developed based on the available information and technology to prepare high resolution advisories involving risk factor acceptable to the farmers

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