Preparatory Workshop on Climate Resilience Project

Hyderabad, 1 July, 2010

The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has proposed a new national scheme on climate resilient agriculture in participatory mode. The scheme has three basic objectives: strategic research on adaptation and mitigation; technology demonstration on farmers’ fields to cope with current climate variability; and capacity building.

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To sensitize the project partners on preparation of the technical programme and location specific interventions for climate adaptation, a one day `Preparatory workshop’ was held at Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture (CRIDA) on July 1, 2010 where in the programme coordinators of 95 KVKs and 25 Chief Scientists of different AICRPDA centres have participated. The meet was chaired by Dr.A.K.Singh, Deputy Director General, Natural Resource Management, ICAR and Dr.K.D.Kokate, Deputy Director General (Agriculture Extension), ICAR. The details of the technology interventions to be implemented were discussed agro-climatic zone wise and general guidelines were formulated on selection of villages, stakeholder participation, finalization of interventions and monitoring indicators.

The 100 KVKs will be involved in implementation of this programme for the next two years. The 8 Zonal Project Directorates of the ICAR will be monitoring the programme and overall coordination of the project will be done by Dr.B.Venkateswarlu, Director, CRIDA, Hyderabad.

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Under the first objective, comprehensive research will be under taken on major food crops for their vulnerability to climate change and climate variability; regional impacts of extreme weather events and development of cost effective adaptation strategies through crop improvement, livestock management and fisheries sectors are the key researchable areas to be addressed.

As part of the second objective, the existing technologies that help farmers to cope with climate variability will be demonstrated as a package in 100 villages located in 100 most vulnerable districts of the country through the Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs) and the centres of the All India Coordinated Research Project on Dryland Agriculture (AICRPDA).

( Source: NAIP sub-project on Mass Media Mobilization, DIPA with inputs from CRIDA)