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Space inputs for precision agriculture: scope for proto-type experiments in the diverse Indian agro-ecosystems
Extensions of irrigation, genetically improved crops and use of inorganic fertilizers have been the harbingers of Green Revolution in the country. Those multi-purpose irrigation commands, which accelerated the irrigation networks in 70s & 80s, are now characterized by depleted irrigation efficiency, water logging and salinity. At the behest of Ministry of Water Resources, remote sensing based command areas inventory has been taken up in the priority irrigation commands to enhance the water use efficiency. In the similar line, a coarse scale land degradation mapping was carried out at behest of Ministry of Agriculture. It is important to mention here that in some of critically affected areas of Gangetic plains of Uttar Pradesh, land degradation to the extent of village level has been mapped out. Based on this, several land reclamation efforts- including the World Bank supported programmes, have been taken up to restore the health of soils. In coming years, with the support from Ministry of Agriculture, ISRO/DOS is planning to launch Nationwide Land Degradation Mapping Mission at the scale 1: 50,000, so as to delineate land degradation at Village level.
By virtue of the unique combinations of IRS satellites with varied resolutions and capabilities, the space segment in the country is in a position to monitor agricultural drought and recurrent floods more efficiently. Capturing the flood events with the damages to the Villages and crops has formed the scientific basis for damage assessment and thereby relief operations at various levels. This year, for example, flood inundation maps in Orissa were generated depicting the marooned areas during the different flood waves and disseminated to the user community within hours through the Internet. Space inputs to agricultural drought monitoring is yet another aspect to target the districts and taluks on the basis of severity of drought.
Department of Space at the behest of Ministry of Rural Development has carried out nation-wide wasteland mapping on 1: 50,000 scale using the IRS data. The Wasteland Atlas of India covering the wasteland statistics of entire country has been brought out. These maps would help in retrieving the information at village/watershed (500 ha) levels, for implementation of wastelands/watershed development programmes. The uniqueness of wasteland mapping has also been the creation of digital database with village as well as watershed boundaries.
With the hydro-geomorphological maps prepared under the National Drinking Water Mission, and subsequently to the Rajiv Gandhi National Drinking Water Mission, satellite remote sensing has really made a dent in reaching its potentials down the line to grassroots. Search for groundwater, particularly in areas with consolidated and semi-consolidated rock formations, considered more difficult from the point of view of exploration as well as recharging of groundwater, is considerably aided by the use of the hydro-geomorphological maps. These maps are extensively used for locating prospective groundwater sites around problem habitations in the country, as a part of the 'scientific-source finding'.
At the behest of the Planning Commission, scientific inputs were generated from remote sensing on land use/land cover of entire country to evolve agro-climatic zonation based planning. These applications have moved further to large scale mapping across the problem regions of the country (especially the rain-fed regions), towards micro-level decision making for sustainable development. Under remote sensing based Integrated Mission for Sustainable Development Mission (IMSD), land and water resources development plans were carried out for about 80 mha. in 175 districts of the country. Implementation of these plans in certain areas has enriched the ground water potential, increased the cropping intensity along with the net returns from the fields. It is important to note that these experiments were conducted in the terrain of low productivity, mainly dry lands/rain-fed areas, predominantly wastelands, where the scope of doubling food production is the main issue. Emphasis is being laid in operational utilization of this vast database for ground level implementation by concerned user agencies.
The success of these experiments lies not only due to the applications of space inputs alone, but largely due to the synergistic interfaces among grass root level farmers, administrators/policy makers and multi-disciplinary scientific communities. With operationalisation of the National Natural Resources Management System (NNRMS) in the country, with DOS as the nodal agency, the space, ground and user segments have been properly tuned to respond to the challenges of sustainable crop production in the country.
The INSAT-VHRR observations on clouds, cyclone depressions, surface radiance and monsoon parameters in the Indian Ocean have really strengthened the agro-meteorological services in the country. To disseminate the appropriate locale-specific agricultural packages, there are several programmes such as 'Krishi Darshan' being beamed through all the regional channels. An operational system of public instruction has been established since 1995, using the INSAT based Training and Development Communication Channel (TDCC) for disseminating the improved agricultural practices, training primary school teachers, Panchayat Raj, elected representatives, Anganwadi workers, wasteland development functionaries etc. The Jhabua Development Communication Project (JDCP), undertaken by ISRO in Jhabua district of MP, has been providing communication support to the developmental activities and also interactive training to the development functionaries, besides empowering the poor and marginalised tribal.
A pilot project sponsored by the Planning Commission, a single window information service provider concept - called Agro-climatic Planning and Information Bank (APIB) has been developed for the farmers of drought prone areas of Karnataka. The APIB is an effort to empower the farmers and reduce their vulnerability to crop failures. Moving to the farmer's cooperatives, ISRO has taken up jointly with IFFCO - a major initiative on developing remote sensing and GIS based decision support system for fertilizer movements in the priority areas. Finally, space applications over last three decades in agriculture have made this sector information rich and have addressed the various issues encompassing the different sectors of agriculture.
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