One-day Demonstration/ Data Acquisition programme held at Pinjora & Allowpora

SHOPIAN : CSIR-IIIM Jammu in collaboration with Krishi Vigyan Kendra Shopian today conducted a one day demonstration cum data acquisition programme at Pinjora and Allowpora villages of Shopian district.
The programme was attended by a team of scientists from both the collaborating organizations, expert and project leader Dr. Shahid Rasool, Senior Scientist, CSIR-IIIM Jammu, Dr. Zaffar Afroz Badri, Senior Scientist & Head, KVK-Shopian, Dr. Bilal Ahmad Pandit, Scientist Horticulture, KVK- Shopian, Dr. Pradeep Rajan, Principal Scientist CSIR-CMERI Ludhiana Dr. Dev Shree Kumar, Principal Scientist, CSIR-National Aerospace Laboratories, Bangalore and their team and more than fifty students from Horticulture background.
At the outset the expert and team leader, Dr. Shahid Rasool deliberated upon the use of Drone in the orchards systems for disease forecasting and its timely management with minimum use of inputs and keeping the disease incidence below economic threshold level.
The programme was conducted under the aegis of the project ‘CSIR Mission on Region Specific Smart Agro Technologies for Enhancing Soil and Plant health.’
The main aim of the programme was to upgrade and upscale the Horticulture Professional with up to date technologies for efficient use of resources to reap better dividends under the activity of Demonstration and Data Acquisition of crop phonological parameters in high density and conventional apple orchard systems using Multispectral and Lidar imaging for disease diagnosis, monitoring and its management and Use of Soil Optical instrumentation for analyzing the soil profiling and nutrient status for best use of available resources.
Dr. Pradeep Rajan highlighted the importance of the soil optical instrument, its demonstration and data acquisition for soil proximal Mapping for High resolution, soil Maps in traditional and high density apple orchards and how efficiently it can be used for analyzing the soil status and nutrient recommendation for conserving the costs.
Dr Bilal Ahmad Pandit Scientist Horticulture elaborated how drone technology can be used in future for prosperity of the orchardists and to curtail the manual labor costs and inputs with these high end mechanical instruments to enhance benefits ratio and will lead the horticulture sector to the next level of progress and prosperity.