The 10th annual review meeting of Gramin Krishi Mausam Sewa (GKMS) was organised at the OUAT here in collaboration with Indian Meteorological Department, New Delhi.
The basic objective of the rural agriculture weather service project is to provide weather-based agro-met advisory to farming community in advance to take advantage of benevolent weather and take precautions in adverse weather conditions.
Around 200 agro-meteorologists from 130 Agro Met Field Units across the country, renowned scientists of ICAR institutes, ISRO, IITs, heads of different Regional Meteorological Centres and invited farmers participated. The three- day meeting was aimed at reviewing consolidated work progress of all GMKS centres pertaining to weather forecast, preparation of agro-met advisories and its dissemination, capacity building, awareness, outreach etc. and to discuss future road map.
Department of Agriculture and Farmers Empowerment Principal Secretary Manoj Ahuja attended as chief guest, while Dr PN Jagadev, Dean of Research, OUAT welcomed the guests and delegates.
Ahuja informed that the production and productivity must be increased by using the potentiality of the Indian scientists. Also, he told that the soil sampling must be done randomly from both irrigated and non irrigated lands and the IRRI model should be implemented to increase the productivity. The yield of food grains increased by about 15-20 per cent by using the agro advisory services, he said.
Dr Singh, Head, Agromet, IMD, New Delhi as chief speaker made a brief presentation on the activities and outcomes of GKMS project in India and its contribution to farming community.
Scientist Dr M Mohapatra expressed pleasure on the improvement of weather forecasting and cyclone warning system in last decade. Due to the improvement in weather forecasting the farmers are able to take contingent measures during any natural calamities, he opined.
OUAT VC Prof S Pasupalak focused on the involvement of State Government for the dissemination of agromet advisories because the advisory is now becoming block level from district level. Also, there is a great role of KVKs in collecting the block level information which is most important for the advisory preparation, he said.
There will be five technical session mainly focusing on climate risk and its adaptation, extended range forecast for climate risk management in agriculture, ongoing and future activities of GKMS, use of satellite products for use in AAS, automation in agro advisory using dynamic crop weather calendar, verification of district level weather forecast and existing outreach and possible improvements and preparation of road map for future activities. Dr N Chattopadhyay, DDGM (Agrimet), IMD, Pune, AS Ganeshan, Advisor, AAI, Bangalore, Dr DC Naik, Head, NBSSlUP, Kolkata, Prof Saroj K Sanyal, BCKV, West Bengal were among others present. Dr lM Garnayak gave vote of thanks.