First Annual Workshop of NICRA Organized

Hyderabad, June 12 , 2012

The first Annual Workshop of the National Initiative on Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA) was organized at Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture (CRIDA), Hyderabad. Dr.A.K.Singh, Deputy Director General (NRM), ICAR; Dr.Y.P.Abrol, Chair of the Expert Committee and Dr.B.Venkateswarlu, Director, CRIDA addressed the inaugural session and deliberated on the issues.

The project made good progress in one year as evidenced by the identification of good number of promising germplasm in different crops, like rice, wheat and pulses which retained reproductive performance at extremely low and high temperatures, strong evidence on the usefulness of on-farm water harvesting in adaptation of rainfed agriculture, further insights into the strategies for reducing emissions in paddy and identification of low carbon technologies for irrigated and rainfed production systems. The second component of the project, i.e. technology demonstration in 100 vulnerable districts will be reviewed separately through the zonal workshops. The action plan document of this component and the research highlights of the Project for 2010-12 were released on the occasion. Other publications and CDs released on the occasion available on NICRA website.

NICRA-20-06-2012

The workshop was organized in five technical sessions covering the themes of (i) vulnerability and impact assessments. (ii) adaptation and mitigation through natural resources management, (iii) crop improvement for multiple abiotic stresses, (iv) pest and disease dynamics under changing climate and impact on pollinators (v) adaptation strategies in livestock and fisheries.

The Workshop was attended by nearly 200 scientists from NARS system, other universities, IITs and NGOs who are partnering in different components of the Project. The projects under strategic research, sponsored and competitive grant components were reviewed for the work carried out during 2011-12 and the action plan for 2012-13 and the approach for XII Plan were finalized.

Major recommendations:

Organize thematic workshops to bring more clarity among all the participating scientists on the technical program.
The major goal of the project is to reduce losses at the farm level when a climatic event like droughts, floods, cyclone and frost occur.
The focus is more on developing and testing technologies and practices which help farmers to cope with current climate variability, while we continue to assess the long term impacts of climate change which will be addressed through policy initiatives.
Manuals on various thematic activities like carbon sequestration, conservation agriculture, use of bio char, measurement of GHGs and germplasm screening for multiple stresses will be brought out so that all the participating scientists collect the minimum data set and the experimental data will be comparable across crops and locations.
Clear guidelines will be prepared by the core institutes to work out water, carbon and energy footprints of the interventions/practices being adopted in the project.
Quarterly review and monitoring of the technical and financial progress will be made by the lead center.
CRIDA as the lead center will make efforts to provide climatic data for the country in a form usable by all partners. For this, a separate section in the NICRA website as "Tools and Services" will be developed.
In some partner institutes where the technical program needs further strengthening, the lead center will organize institute wise meetings and develop a clear work plan for 2012-13.

(Source: CRIDA, Hyderabad)