BHUBANESWAR: The Indian Institute of Water Management (IIWM) of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has adopted innovative water and crop management strategies to address farm distress faced by Odisha’s coastal districts due to multiple weather hazards like flood, drought and cyclone.
A project has been undertaken under National Innovation for Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA) in the waterlogged areas of the State to develop climate resilient agriculture.
While farmers of Puri have already adopted ‘Agro-forestry and pond based framing’ and are fetching higher income, the ICAR-IIWM has advised farmers of other coastal districts to adopt the technology for enhancing farm output.
The IIWM-Bhubaneswar recently organised a fair-cum-farmers-scientists interaction meet at Alisha village in Puri to disseminate the technologies and sensitise farmers.
Addressing the farmers, Director of National Rice Research Institute (NRRI), Cuttack Himanshu Pathak said there are several rice varieties and cultivation practices which can be adopted by farmers of waterlogged areas.
He advised farmers to adopt climate-resilient agriculture and cultivate new rice varieties which have been developed especially for waterlogged areas.
Director of IIWM SK Ambast assured to provide all types of technical support to improve the challenging ecosystem and farmers’ income which has increased four to five times after adopting the pond-based and land shaping technology.
Climate scientist from IIT-Bhubaneswar, Prof UC Mohanty said since coastal areas are more vulnerable to multiple weather hazards, farmers should adopt water management technology for higher productivity and income. He solicited Government’s support to scale up the new agricultural practices.
About 250 farmers from different villages of Puri and experts from ICAR-IIWM, NRRI, Cuttack and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bhubaneswar attended.