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Researchers at IIT Kharagpur have developed a sophisticated weather forecast system to help farmers in agricultural actions and scale back climatic dangers, an official mentioned on Saturday.
The institute in collaboration with the India Meteorological Department began providing an agro-advisory to cultivators to enhance their manufacturing in several weather situations, the IIT-KGP spokesperson mentioned.
Sponsored by the Ministry of Earth Sciences, two initiatives – ‘Gramin Krishi Mausam Sewa’ and ‘Forecasting Agricultural output using Space, Agrometeorology and Land- based observations’ – present weather info to farmers to enhance their financial return, the official mentioned.
“The agro-advisory offers crop selection, planting time, land preparation, input management and yield. It is based on future weather and land characteristics of a specific location,” agricultural and meals engineering division’s professor Dilip Kumar Swain mentioned.
Farmers get consciousness on managing inputs resembling fertiliser, irrigation and pesticide each week all through the cropping season.
“Based on a five-day weather forecast, the agro- advisory is prepared on Tuesday and Friday every week and sent to farmers’ cell phones, he said.
The advisory is being sent in Bengali to about three lakh farmers of West Medinipur, Jhargram, Bankura, Birbhum, and Purulia in West Bengal.
Using the advisory, they can protect their crop from extreme weather events and reduce production cost by need- based irrigation, fertiliser and pesticide applications, the professor said.
IIT Kharagpur director professor Virendra Kumar Tewari said, “Besides sending the agro-advisory, we also conduct training and awareness programmes regularly in villages on organic and integrated farming and advanced production technology for sustainable agricultural growth.”
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