Weather Forecast in Agriculture and Agro-advisory

Agriculture is always posing challenges to the farmers, since most of crop cultivation is being done under open condition rather than under protected condition. There all always risks affecting crop production anywhere. Among the three crop production risks, the share of inherited risk is 30 percent; it is 30 percent for transferable risk; for risks that can be minimized with the introduction of technologies is 40 percent.

The inherited risks like soil salinity and soil sodicity can be reduced through land improvement. Crop insurance, wherever available, can reduce the transferable risk. Risks due to introduction of production technologies can be reduced effectively by taking farm decisions based on weather forecast. In this context, weather forecast in agriculture and formulation of agro-advisory are very important to reduce the crop production risks systematically in an effective way.

In this course, some basic aspects of meteorology will be introduced in the beginning along with the topic on weather forecast in agriculture and agro-advisory. The important topics to be covered are highlighted hereunder.

•  Students of Agriculture Universities
•  Faculty of SAU
•  Agriculture Scientists in ARS
•  NGOs in Agriculture
•  Farming Community
•  Agricultural Produce Marketing Officials
•  Agricultural Input Dealers

•  Basic aspects of weather elements and their impact on crop production.
•  Type of crop production risk and their management
•  Types of weather forecast, navigation of weather forecast website and preparation of agro-advisory
•  Farm decision making based on agro-advisory

Qualifying students will be given certificates based on their involvement and performance. Participation certificate and Competency certificate will be issued by Center for Development of Technical Education, IIT Kanpur and Commonwealth of Learning (COL), Canada.