Micro-level agro-meteorological advisory services soon in India

The Hindu: Micro-level, block-specific agro-meteorological advisory services are set to become a reality soon. Farmers will soon start receiving such customised agro-met services, which should help raise their awareness and gear up to tackle impact of climate change like a drought or floods.

A pilot for such an initiative is being tried out in the 10 taluks of Belgaum district in North Karnataka under the National Initiative on Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA). The initiative is likely to be rolled out to about 100 districts which are vulnerable to climate change over the next few years. “A network of 100 automatic weather stations (AWS) are being set up in Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs) of vulnerable districts to relay crop and weather data on real-time basis to formulate advisories” said Mr V.U.M. Rao, Project Coordinator at the Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture (CRIDA).

The weather stations, spread across locations such as Kargil and Poonch in Jammu and Kashmir to North East and Port Blair, generate data relating to temperature, humidity, wind speed, rainfall and radiation among other and transmit the same to the central server at CRIDA in Hyderabad on a real-time basis using GPRS technology....

Winnowing rice in Uttarakand, shot by Yann, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported