National Consultation on Application of ICT in Agriculture organized

6^th March, 2019, New Delhi

The Indian Council of Agricultural Research, New Delhi organized “National Consultation on Application of Information Communication Technology in Agriculture” here today.

In his inaugural address, Dr. Trilochan Mohapatra, Secretary (DARE) & DG (ICAR) said over one billion mobile users in the country have added to the strength of scientists in using ICT in the agriculture for intelligent farming and post production management of the produce. The Director General stated that the there is a bright future for emerging areas of artificial intelligence, block chain technology, Internet of Things (IoT) and sensor-based precision farming in agriculture in the country.

Dr. Mohapatra said the pan-India presence of ICAR institutes and Krishi Vigyan Kendras have provided the ICAR with an unique strength for developing the ICT interface with the plants, animal, man and machine. He also urged the experts for developing the pilot projects to standardize the protocols of A.I. and sensor-based precision farming.

The Director General shared his concerns about the deteriorating conditions of the natural resources that call to produce more from less by the adoption of smart agricultural practices. He said this marks the forthcoming technological revolution in agriculture that encompasses the use of IoT for ubiquitous data gathering, use of always connected farm machineries for variable rate application, use of big data analytics for informed decision making and timely responsiveness.

Dr. Mohapatra emphasized that the aim of the future projects should be on developing IoT-based data acquisition and cloud-based data analytics platform for the agriculture sector for expediting the adoption of precision farming and Smart Agriculture in the country.

The Deputy Directors General and other Senior Officials of DARE/ICAR participated in the meeting.

A team of more than 100 Computer Scientists and experts of ICAR and other organizations participated in the meeting and deliberated upon the application of Information Communication Technology in Agriculture.

(Source: Indian Council of Agricultural Research, New Delhi)