Protected cultivation practices are gaining momentum in Madhya Pradesh due to combined efforts of Government of India, Madhya Pradesh State Horticulture Mission and Precision Farming Development Centre (PFDC) established at ICAR-Central Institute of Agricultural Engineering, Bhopal. The area under drip irrigation has increased from about 90,000 ha in 2012-13 to over 2, 50,000 ha in 2017-18., similarly the total area under shadenet house and polyhouses increased from 26.0 ha to over 300 ha during this period.   The staff of PFDC provides technical support to the state government in advocating these practices amongst the farming communities. The regular training programmes organized on drip irrigation, plastic mulching technology and covered cultivation by the PFDC helped over 100 farmers of Madhya Pradesh state to establish drip irrigation, plastic mulching, shadenet houses, polyhouses etc for enhancing their income over traditional farming practices. Farmers...

The Gosaba Island of Indian Sunderbans is surrounded by tidal rivers connected with Bay of Bengal, bringing water of high salinity (more than 30 dS/m), which is not suitable for irrigation in agriculture. Good quality ground water is also unavailable for irrigation due to various technical reasons. Due to these farmers in this village are unable to grow rabi crops. Farm ponds which harvest the rain water during monsoon are the only source of water for irrigation in the post monsoon period. To increase the cropped area, solar powered drip irrigation technology has been introduced in the Island under the CSI4CZ project. Analysis of monthly weather data available at Canning Town shows that the average bright sunshine hours (BSH) during the rabi season is 7 – 9 hrs a day, which is sufficient to harness the solar energy for use in agriculture. Under this technology solar panels were installed near the pond and a nano pump (0.1 hp) was used for lifting water from the farm pond to a tank (...

16th July 2018, New Delhi Shri Radha Mohan Singh, Union Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister, while addressing the 90th ICAR Foundation Day and ICAR Award Ceremony said the efforts of the ICAR have not only helped India transform from an importing nation to an exporting nation but also provided self-sufficiency and nutritional security in food grains. Due to the efforts of skilled scientists and the hard work of the farmers, the country today has a buffer stock in food grain, he added.     The agriculture minister emphasised that ICAR is playing a vital role in fulfilling the government vision of doubling farmers’ income by 2022. The Minister expressed happiness and said that due to the techniques developed by ICAR and hard work of the farmers, food grain production touched 275.68 million tonnes this year, which is 10.64 million tonnes more than 265.04 million tonnes recorded in 2013-14. Horticulture production has touched 305 million tonnes this year. The...

Shri Nim Tshering Lepcha, the President of Lower Nandok of Nandok-Naitam GPU, East Sikkim district, is an innovative farmer engaging himself in different farm activities like off-season vegetable cultivation in low-cost houses, large cardamom cultivation, fishery, backyard poultry, dairy etc. to earn additional income. These ventures however, were not very much profitable with the amount of labour involvement. There was a lot of interest among the farmers, of the village to start the production of organic ginger in the region but the technological inputs and knowledge of cultivation was lacking. Shri Lepcha was in a dilemma in growing this crop for economic viability and in fact, he was having the problem in procurement of quality planting materials for further multiplication, proper processing and organized marketing. Technology/process intervened The scientists of ICAR-KVK, East Sikkim visited the village and the organic production of ginger technology was imparted through skill...

Land degradation due to the accumulation of salts in the soil is an alarming threat to agricultural productivity and sustainability, particularly in arid and semiarid regions of the world. In India, about 6.73 million ha soils are salt affected which represents 2.1% of the geographical area of the country. Out of these, 2.8 million ha are sodic and mainly occur in the alluvial soils of the    Indo-Gangetic plains (IGP) and a large proportion of these soils are cultivated by smallholder farmers, who rely on that piece of land to satisfy their food and feed needs.        Santaraha village in Hardoi district of Uttar Pradesh extending from N 270 36’ 31” to 270 36’ 32” latitude and E 800 11’ 34” to 800 11’ 52” longitude at an elevation of 139 m above mean sea level was selected for farmer’s participatory sodic soil reclamation programme by ICAR-Central Soil Salinity Research Institute, Karnal. The...