Expect better crop harvest in future: Met dept

Armed with the Rs25-crore central fund allocated under the 12th Five Year Plan, the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) hopes to give more accurate and timely forecast of crop after procuring advanced technology equipment and using remote sensing method.

The forecast is being used by farmers, agriculture department and the ministry of agriculture for better harvest and policy decisions like predicting whether the country will need to import foodgrain and how much will be the yield and of which crop etc.

IMD’s Forecasting Agricultural output using Space, Agrometeorology and Land based observations (FASAL), in coordination with three other institutes in the country, prepare the forecast. IMD has been providing the forecast to the government since the past two years. Considering the importance of the data for farmers and policy-makers, the department has plans to expand the project.

Under the project, IMD started issuing national, state and district-level multiple in-season crop yield forecast for eleven major crops. Crop yield forecast is being issued by IMD at mid-season and pre-harvest stage.

Agricultural meteorology (IMD) senior researcher Bhagyashree Dhekale said, “In the project’s next phase, we aim to use remote sensing data to predict efficiently the crop yield at national, regional and district level.”

“We had divided the cultivation area into 46 units all over the country. Now, we will break it up into 130 units as it will help in giving more accurate predictions,” said Tejaswini Upadhye, a senior research fellow at the agromet department of IMD.

Launched under the 11th Five Year with an allocation of Rs4 crore, the project started functioning in 2010.

“In the next phase, capacity building and using more parameters for prediction is the priority,” said Upadhye.