National Initiative on Climate Resilient Agriculture

Abstract

Climate change has become an important area of concern for India to ensure food and nutritional security for growing population. In India, significant negative impacts have been implied with medium-term (2010-2039) climate change, predicted to reduce yields by 4.5 to 9 percent, depending on the magnitude and distribution of warming. Since agriculture makes up roughly 16 percent of India’s GDP, a 4.5 to 9% negative impact on production implies a cost of climate change to be roughly up to 1.5 percent of GDP per year. The Government of India has accorded high priority on research and development to cope with climate change in agriculture sector. The Prime Minister’s National Action Plan on climate change has identified agriculture as one of the eight national missions. With this background, the ICAR has launched a major Project entitled, National Initiative on Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA) during 2010-11 with the objectives of enhancing the resilience of Indian agriculture covering crops, livestock and fisheries to climatic variability and climate change through development and application of improved production and risk management technologies, demonstration of site specific technology packages on farmers’ fields for adapting to current climate risks and to enhance the capacity building of scientists and other stakeholders in climate resilient agricultural research and its application. The overall expected outcome is enhanced resilience of agricultural production to climate variability in vulnerable regions. The project is comprised of four components. (1) Strategic research on adaptation and mitigation; (2) Technology demonstration on farmers’ fields to cope with current climate variability; (3) Sponsored and competitive research grants to fill critical research gaps and (4) Capacity building of different stake holders. The All India Coordinated Research Project for Dryland Agriculture was started in 1971 with 16 centers. At present, it has a network of 22 centers located in 20 State Agricultural Universities, two other Universities. Out of 22 centers, 8 centers are operating Operational Research Project (ORP) for testing the research findings on farmers’ fields, receiving feedback and refinement of such technologies to enable up-scaling in the target domains. Under Technology Demonstration Component of NICRA at AICRPDA centres, the on-station and on-farm demonstration / trials were planned in four thematic areas viz., (i) Real Time Contingency Planning, (ii) Rainwater Management, (iii) Soil Health and Carbon Sequestration (iv) Energy Management and (v) Alter Land Use System. The demonstration under real time contingency planning are conducted under real time weather situations and to be implemented accordingly. Further, the interventions under rain water management (in-situ and ex-situ) and energy management were proven rainfed technologies and are location specific. The demonstrations under alternate land use are long term adaptation strategies, likely to attract the farmers for adoption and benefit with ecosystem services. I compliment the efforts of Dr Ch. Srinivasarao, Project Coordinator (Dryland Research), Dr G.Ravindra Chary, Dr G.R.Maruthi Sankar and Er. R.Nagarjuna Kumar, the Chief Scientists, Scientists and staff of AICRPDA and ORP centers for compiling the Technical Program (2013-14) of the NICRA project at AICRPDA Centres. This will help for efficient monitoring and evaluation of the NICRA activities. I also thank Dr.AK. Sikka, Deputy Director General (NRM) and Dr.Mohan Kumar, Assistant Director General (Agronomy & Agroforestry), ICAR for providing the guidance and support to AICRPDA from time to time.