Capacity Development for 100 NICRA-KVK Staff on

Climate Resilient Agriculture at ICAR-CRIDA

ICAR-CRIDA organized 8-day capacity development program for KVK Staff in four batches during 19-31 January, 2015 in which 205 participants including Program Coordinators, Subject Mater Specialists and research fellows from 100 NICRA-KVKs in eight Zonal Project Directorates (ZPDs) implementing Technology Demonstration Component (TDC) under the National Initiative on Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA) project participated.  

Dr. Ch. Srinivasa Rao, Director, CRIDA appreciated the efforts of KVK participants from 27 states for undertaking the organic resource inventory carried out in NICRA adopted villages which facilitated computation of village level carbon balance estimates. He emphasized on up-scaling of successful interventions to tackle specific climatic stresses such as drought, flood, heat and cold stresses and other climate extremes. This is important to build resilience at the village level which is now possible by adopting cluster village approach under the proposed National Adaptation Fund. He reiterated that the overall goal of technology demonstrations is to develop 130 model villages which are climate resilient. Dr. Y.G. Prasad, Coordinator, NICRA-TDC outlined the program objectives of the capacity development program designed as module-wise interactive sessions on technology demonstrations by involving resource faculty from CRIDA and local research Institutes.

Dr. K S. Varaprasad, Director, DOR and Dr D. Ramarao, Director, NAARM, Dr N. Sudhakar, ZPD, Zone V and Dr Atar Singh, ZPD, Zone IV interacted with KVK staff from north, south, east and north-eastern states. Dr M. Maheswari, PI, NICRA, nodal officers at ZPDs Dr D. Keshava (Zone I) and Dr Rajender Reddy (Zone V) interacted and guided the participants on various aspects of technology demonstrations.

Multidisciplinary staff from 100 NICRA KVKs belonging to different regions was brought together in four batches to facilitate interaction and cross learning on successful interventions for climate resilience in agriculture.  The capacity development program was undertaken based on the recommendation of Zonal Monitoring Committees. Knowledge updating on various aspects covered value added agromet advisories, principles, data formats and quantification of impact of climate resilient practices and technologies in natural resource management, crop production, livestock production systems and also on strengthening village level institutions for seed bank and custom hiring of farm machinery.

Best performing NICRA-KVKs and KVKs hand holding Village level Climate Risk Management Committees (VCRMC) in each zone shared their experiences by presenting the best practices, their impact and farmers feedback in adopted NICRA villages. All the KVKs participated in the poster sessions on successful interventions vis-a-vis climate vulnerability faced in the adopted village. Participants visited state-of-the-art climate change research facilities on phenomics, OTCs, GHG measurements and livestock interventions established at CRIDA under NICRA.

YG Prasad, Coordinator, TDC-NICRA and JVNS Prasad, Co-PI steered the capacity development program with the help of CRIDA scientists on agromet advisories (VUM Rao, Project Coordinator, ACIRP on Agrometeorology and Bapujirao); natural resource management (KV Rao); crop production (KA Gopinath); Livestock (DBV Ramana & Pankaj Kumar), VCRMCs (K Nagasri); Custom hiring centre model for farm machinery (I Srinivas, B Sanjeev Reddy & R Adake); measuring resilience (CA Ramarao), phenomics (SK Yadav), OTCs (M Vanaja) and special interaction on water saving techniques in paddy (R Mahender, Principal Scientist, DRR); Online Resources (N. Ravi Kumar).