Achievements & Challenges in
AgroMet Services
in India
LS Rathore
1
BROAD CREDENTIALS OF AAS IN 11TH FIVE YEAR PLAN
Integrated Agromet Advisory Service is operating in the country in the fourth year
under the 11th Five Year Plan successfully with an objective to serve the farming
community at different parts of the country.
The planners as well as the farmers in the country have recognized this flagship
programme of Government of India as useful and timely.
It is a step to contribute to weather information based crop/livestock management
strategies and operations dedicated to enhancing crop production and food
security.
The main emphasis of the existing AAS system is to collect and organize
climate/weather, soil and crop information, and to amalgamate them with weather
forecast to assist farmers in taking management decisions.
This has helped to develop and apply operational tools to manage weather related
uncertainties through agro-meteorological applications for efficient agriculture in
rapidly changing environments.
AGROMET ADVISORY SERVICES
Achievements
Since Launching of
the Service
3
IMD Multi-model Ensemble (MME) based
District level Forecasts

District level (567 districts) weather forecast up to 5 days started from 1st June,
2008

7 weather parameters- Rainfall
- Wind speed and direction
- Maximum temperature
- Relative humidity
- Minimum temperature
- Cloud cover
In addition, Weekly cumulative rainfall forecast is also provided.

IMD, New Delhi generates these products based on a Multi Model Ensemble
(MME) technique using forecast products available from number models of India
and other countries.

These include: T-799 model of European Centre for Medium Range Weather
Forecasting (ECMWF); National Centre for Environmental Prediction (NCEP),
USA and Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), IMD and NCMRWF models.

The products are disseminated to Regional Meteorological Centres and
Meteorological Centres of IMD located in different states. These offices
undertake value addition to these products and communicate to 130 AgroMet
Field Units (AMFUs) located at State Agriculture Universities (SAUs), institutes of
Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR) , IIT etc.
Districts
Bijapur
Narayanpur
Dantewada
Jagdalpur
Kanker
Dhamtari
Mahasamund
Raipur
Durg
Rajnandgon
Kabirdham
Janjgir
Bilaspur
Korba
Raigarh
Jashpur
Surguja
Koria
Percentage
Qualitative verification of Rainfall Forecast
Graph showing sucess and failure of rainfall forecast
120
100
80
60
Failure %
40
Success %
20
0
Ongoing Dissemination under PPP Models
Proposed Dissemination under PPP Models
COMMON SERVICE
CENTRE
MSSRF
Brochure for Awareness
Brochure in different languages are prepared for
circulation among the users/ farmers
Hindi
Nepali
English
Oriya
Assamees
Punjabi
Gujarati
Tamil
Manipuri
Marathi
Display of District Level AAS bulletins in different websites
Sr. No.
AMFU station
Website addresses
1
Basar
https://sites.google.com/site/iaasbasar/
2
Rahuri
http://mpkv.mah.nic.in
3
Ambikapur
http://igau.edu.in
4
Namakkal
www.tanuvas.ac.in
5
Jodhpur
www.cazri.res.in
6
Delhi
www.iari.res.in
7
Solan
www.yspuniversity.ac.in
9
Dantiwada
www.sdau.edu.in
10
Jorhat
http://192.168.99.1/dee/aaservices.php, http://www.aau.ac.in/dee/aaservices.php
11
Hyderabad
www.agromet.ap.nic.in
12
Palampur
http://www.hillagric.ernet.in/info/kisano_ke_liye_soochna/index.htm
13
Raichur
www.uasraichur.edu.in
14
Srinagar
www.skuastkashmir.ac.in
15
Ranchi
www.sameti.org, ww.baujharkhand.org
16
Junagarh
www.jau.in
17
Hissar
http://hau.ernet.in/coa/agromet.htm,http://hau.ernet.in/coa/agromet_pub.htm
18
Jagdalpur
www.cropweatheroutlook.org, www.igau.edu.in
19
Kanniwadi
www.oddanchatrammarket.com
20
Modipuram
http://www.svbpmeerut.ac.in
21
Raichur
uasraichur.edu.in/info/infofile
22
Manipur
www.mosdac.gov.in, www.icar.org.in
Contd…
Hosting of
interactive
website
A new interactive
website will be
launched shortly to
provide required
information on AAS
Installation of
Agro Automatic Weather Stations
 Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) at different
places in the state and
Agro-AWS at
Agrometeorological Field Units (AMFU’s) located
at State Agriculture Universities (SAUs), institutes
of Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR),
Indian Institute of Technology under Integrated
Agromet Advisory Services (IAAS) are being
installed on priority basis.
 Installation of Agro-AWS is also under
consideration in all the Krishi Vigyan Kendras
(KVK) in each district in the country.
 A number of sensors including soil moisture and
soil temperature, leaf temperature, leaf wetness
are included in the Agro-AWS
Farmer Awareness Programme
Farmer’s Awareness
Programme
on
Weather, Climate and Farmers
So far such seminars have been organized at Aduthurai,
Anakapalli, Anantpur Arnej, Bhairaich, Bangalore, Pune,
Banswara, Basar, Bharatpur, Bhubaneshwar, Brahmavar,
Chennai, Coimbatore, Chintapalli, Dapoli, Faizabad, Hiriyur,
Hyderabad, Hisar, Jabalpur, Jammu, Jaipur, Jhabua, Jagatial,
Jodhpur, Jharnapani, Kakdweep, Kalyani, Kanniwadi, Kolhapur,
Kovilpatti, Kumarakom, Khargpur, Leh, Lam, Ludhiana, Jorhat,
Mahjian, Maktampur, Lamphelpet, Modipuram, Nammakal, Mulde,
Palampur, Pusa, Rajouri, Roorki, Solan, Sonitpur, Srinagar, Thrissur,
Udaipur and Tirupathi.
•To make farmers more self-reliant in dealing with weather and climate information.
•To increase the interaction between farmers and AAS providing agencies i.e. IMD, SAUs,
ICAR etc.
TRAINING
As per the demand of the AMFU
personnel, Agrimet Division, IMD, Pune
organized training for AMFU Scientists
entitled “Agrometeorology towards better
advisories for serving end users
requirement” during the year.
22 AMFU Scientists participated in the
course. There is proposal to conduct one
more batch of Training for Scientists
under AMFU during January 2011.
EXTENSION AND OUT REACH AND COLLECTION OF FEEDBACK
FROM FARMING COMMUNITY
Regular feedback from farmers, State Agricultural Departments
and Agricultural Universities / ICAR and other related Institutes is
being collected and processed for further improvement of
services.
Feedback information are also been collected from Regional and
Narrow casting stations of DD, AIR, and FM channels, Krishi
Vigyan Kendras, ATMA, CSCs, NGOs, VRCs and VKCs. Officers of
the AAS units participated in Kisan Melas to understand the
problems of large groups of farmers.
For improvement of the agro-advisory bulletins, regular discussion
were held among IMD and Agricultural officers at the State AAS
unit level and also with scientists in Agricultural Universities /
ICAR and other related Institutes
Forecasting Agricultural out put using Space, Agrometeorology and
Land based observations (FASAL)
Land
Observations
Cropped area
Crop
condition
Crop
acreage
Crop
yield
MULTIPLE IN-SEASON FORECAST
PreSeason
EarlySeason
MidSeason
State
PreHarvest
State
Revised
Incorporating
damage
Major Thrust Areas for Improvement
Crop/ Weather/ Soil/ Pest/ Disease
Seamless Weather Forecast (Seasonal, Intraseasonal, Extended Range)
Real Time information flow
Crop & Pest/ Disease information to
knowledge pool.
Outreach/Extension Mechanism
Poor Inter-agency Communication
Participation of District level Agencies
Insufficient Feed-Back
Future Strategies to provide
personalised service to Farmers
 Creation optimum observational network(automatic weather
stations): Approximately 33,000 stations in the country.
Establishment of strong network of dissemination under PPP
models
 Creation of Consortium involving all public DOS, DAC etc-private
organisation (TCS, NABARD etc.).
 SMS and IVR in the remaining States.
 Display board in different Mandis
 Integration of all going/proposed R&D projects like mkrishi of TCS
etc .for generation of personalised service in the country.
 Support to various organisations in R& D projects (like P&D and
weather) for preparation of crop and location specific agromet
service.
 Supply of required inputs for preparation of weather derivative for
weather based crop insurance.
 Preparation of user friendly interactive website for establishing two
way communication with the users.
Future Projection IN AAS
 It is proposed to taken up a scheme entitled “Gramin Krishi Seva” for XII
five year plan .The main objectives of the proposed project would be:
 To improvise the existing District level Agromet Advisory Services (AAS),
launched under MoES/IMD under 11th Five Year Plan, in order to deliver the
AAS to farmers at block level with village level advisory.
 To provide last mile connectivity to farmers for accessing the personalized
agromet advisory services.
 To extend the agromet advisory service to the new areas like livestock,
fisheries etc.
 To establish appropriate dissemination system to reach each and every
farmer in the country
 To establish an appropriate support system for weather based crop
insurance in the country.
 To address the climate and climatic variability through high-resolution
agromet advisory service system.
INDO-US COLLABORATION IN AAS
It is proposed to take a project on “Translation of
weather information into Agro-advisories and its
effective dissemination to farming community”.
Under this collaboration it is being explored for
translation of weather information, past & forecast
weather, taking into account other information like
crop, pests & diseases etc. in framing the advisories.
As these advisories are supposed to reach to the
farmers in each village of the country, a mechanism will
be developed based on the available information and
technology to prepare high resolution advisories
involving risk factor acceptable to the farmers
Thanks