National Initiative on Climate Resilient Agriculture

The growing population is demanding more food, fiber, fuel and other renewable products from agriculture. But recent events like cold wave, heat wave, drought, and floods have demonstrated the significant potential of climatic factors to influence the agricultural production, eventually leading to shortages of food grains and increased prices. It is, therefore important that we enhance the resilience of Indian Agricultural Production System to climate change.

Today there is an increasing awareness and concern for affordable and energy efficient equipment and technology for cost-effective production of crops focused at increased yield, reduced cost of cultivation, and efficient utilization of input resources thereby raising farm income. Agricultural Mechanization can help to mitigate climate change by reducing the emissions of green house gases into the atmosphere. Conservation agriculture (CA) can reduce the emissions of fossil fuels as compared to conventional agriculture by up to 60%. In addition to this, the use of fertilizer and agrochemicals can be reduced by 20% by adopting precision farming technologies. This will reduce the emissions resulting from the production of these inputs. However, the largest contribution to mitigate climate change with CA can be obtained from carbon sequestration and storage of atmospheric carbon into soil.

The National Initiative on Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA) was launched on 2 Feb, 2011 with Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture (CRIDA), Hyderabad as the lead centre and CIAE Bhopal as one of core institutes. The project consists of four components viz. Strategic Research, Technology Demonstration, Capacity Building and Sponsored/ Competitive Grants. The project is started at an estimated budget of Rs.350 crore for the XI Plan to be spent on research infrastructure, capacity building and on-farm demonstration of available climate resilient technologies. The project at CIAE aims to enhance resilience of Indian agriculture to climate change and climate vulnerability through strategic research and technology demonstration by giving major thrust on engineering interventions for conservation agriculture, precision farming and energy use efficiency.

· Adoption and impact assessment of agricultural machinery for resource conservation under permanent bed cultivation of soybean-wheat and maize-gram cropping systems.

· Development of spectral reflectance based prototype of variable rate urea application system for top dressing in rice and wheat crops.

· Development of pre-emergence herbicide strip applicator as an attachment to sowing device for wide spaced row crops.

· Review and documentation of conservation agriculture machineries developed/ adopted in India for enhancing carbon sequestration and reduction of GHG emissions.

· Environmental impact assessment of different energy conversion processes for efficient utilization of surplus crop residues.

· Entrained gasification and development of 50 kW electricity generation system.

· Self-sustainable energy management of dairy farm through efficient utilization of dairy waste

· Package of tractor operated equipment for permanent bed cultivation of soybean-wheat and maize-gram crops.

· Prototype of spectral reflectance based on the go variable rate urea application system for top dressing in rice-wheat crop

· Document on conservation agricultural equipment/ machineries developed/ adopted in India

· Multi fuel 50 kW capacity entrained gasification based power generation system

· Self-sustainable energy management system in a dairy farm based on biogas technology

S. N.	Name	Area of Specialization
	Research Associates (RA)
1.	Mr. Chandra Prakash Patidar	Soil Science
2.	Mrs. Madhu Singh	Computer Science
3.	Ms. Hina Siddiqui	Electronics
4.	Mrs. Mayuri Gupta	Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology
5.	Mr. Hemant Sahu	Soil Sciences
	Senior Research Fellow (SRF)
6.	Er. Mukesh Kumar Singh	Farm Machinery and Power Engineering
7.	Ms. Ariba Fatmi	Farm Machinery and Power Engineering
8.	Er. Himanshu Tripathi	Farm Machinery and Power Engineering
9.	Er. Gajanan Harishchandra Wasu	Renewable Energy Sources
10.	Er. Harsha Wakudar	Renewable Energy Sources
11.	Er. Chopade Vaibhav Jagannath	Renewable Energy Sources
12.	Mr. Satish Kumar Karwariya	Remote Sensing and Geological Information System
13.	Er. Gangadhar Bhagat	Soil Water Conservation Engineering
14.	Ms. Ranu Gupta	Computer Science
15.	Mrs. Reena Nair	Horticulture
16.	Ms. Shefali Sharma	Biochemistry
17.	Mr. Rameshwar Prasad Ahirwar	Soil Science
18.	Mr. Anil Kumar Dohare	Agriculture Extension

About NICRA

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