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South Asia to Get its First Climate Adaptation Atlas in Agriculture

Written by rpuri on . Posted in News.

BISA-CIMMYT in collaboration with NARS to develop its first Atlas of Climate Adaptation in South Asian Agriculture

By Richa Sharma Puri & Riya Gupta

Inaugural session for the inception meeting of ACASA with distinguished guests from South Asian countries

April 25, 2023, New Delhi: South Asia has diverse climatic zones given its vast physical landscape. However, the region constantly displays the impact of climate change, where the melting of the glaciers, rising sea levels, soil erosion, water intrusion, and forest fires are worsening the overall situation. These global climatic changes are intensifying the stresses on the most marginalized communities living in South Asia, who are dependent on agriculture, forestry, and fishing for their everyday needs.

Considering this, the Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA) organised an inception meeting to develop an Atlas of Climate Adaptation in South Asian Agriculture (ACASA) in collaboration with the National Agricultural Research System (NARS) of the region. It aims at improving access to climate risk and solution option analytics for South Asian countries. To discuss ACASA, a 3-day inception meeting was held in Delhi, marked by 70 distinguished guests from Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and India discussing the various aspects of Atlas.

The inaugural session featured remarks from Dr. Arun Kumar Joshi, Managing Director, CIMMYT-BISA; Dr. Pramod Aggarwal, Regional Program Leader, CIMMYT-BISA and ACASA Leader; Dr. Purvi Mehta, Director, BMGF; Dr. Tess Russo, Senior Program Officer, BMGF; Dr. Hasan Md. Hamidur Rahman, Director, Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC); Dr. Tika Ram Chapagain, Director, Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC); Dr. P Malathy, DG-Agriculture, Sri Lanka; and Dr. Himanshu Pathak, Secretary-DARE and DG Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), India.

Noting the significance of ACASA, Dr. Pramod Aggarwal, Regional Program Leader, BISA, and ACASA Leader said, “In the face of climate change, countries should pay attention to adaptation policies, and ACASA, when completed in 2025, will provide essential tools to governments, donors, and entities to prioritise investments and enhance the resilience of vulnerable communities to climatic risks”.

Noting the multidimensional nature of ACASA, Dr. Purvi Mehta, Director, BMGF, said, “As South Asia hosts 43% of the world’s farmers, most of its food production is dependent on rainfed agriculture. Research shows climate change entails risks for both farmers and agricultural productivity. Aspects such as food production, food quality, and the income of farmers will all have a significant impact on enhancing productivity. The adaptation of Atlas is hence pivotal in keeping ecological and economic aspects in place”.

Also added Dr. Tess Russo, Senior Program Officer, BMGF: “Solutions must be robust to mitigate climate change hazards. Through the involvement of NARS, we will have better access to data, and as users, we can address what of the problem. Scientists and researchers will further investigate how to address these problems. Thus, ACASA is all of yours, and we will start building it together”.

Looking at de-risking agriculture from the impact of climate change, Dr. Himanshu Pathak, Secretary-DARE and DG Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), India, said, “The Indian market has taken a lot of initiatives, such as climate resilient crop varieties with promising resilient technologies, which have led to increased agricultural productivity of 3–127 times to this end. However, we are still losing yield and livelihoods, the risks are aggravating, and we need more sophisticated technological interventions. ACASA is a welcome step in that direction. A risk and adaptation Atlas would be particularly useful. ICAR is committed to deploying a team of young scientists to implement Atlas at the national level”.

“As a repository of knowledge and best practices, the Atlas is a collaborative effort mitigate the effects of climate change on agriculture”, added further Dr. Hasan Md. Hamidur Rahman, Director, BARC.

From Sri Lanka, Dr. P Malathy, DG-Agriculture, also added “Understanding the spatial and temporal dimensions of climate change would need an evidence-based solution such as ACASA “.

“To tackle global warming, the government of Nepal is implementing various climate change programmes. A common approach like ACASA could be rewarding for the region and country” added Dr. Tika Ram Chapagain, Director, NARC.

Broadly, the cohort at ACASA pondered on the available tools, data, climate hazards and their impacts and adaptation options that can mitigate the negative impacts. The Atlas also proposed to focus on several use cases such as by governments and NGOs in investment prioritisation, insurance industry for business opportunities and food supply sector for ensuring risk free supply chains. In the end, teams at BISA came out with country-specific work plans with detailed activities, timelines, deliverables, and agreed methodology.

Training on “Theoretical and practical aspects of Genomic Approaches for utilisation of Crop Genetic Resources”

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By Dr. Uttam Kumar, Nitesh Singh & Richa Sharma Puri

Participants at CIMMYT-BISA farm in Ludhiana

The twin challenge of climate change and food scarcity is affecting the human population globally. The plant genetic resources have formed the basis of humankind and are now supporting the planet earth in fighting the dual challenges of climate change and food security like never before. Therefore there is a huge need to sustainably utilize these resources and conserve them effectively. There is an urgent need to protect this natural heritage and maintain food and nutritional security. In India, at the national level, the National Bureau of Plant Genetics and Research (NBPGR) is working at the forefront for the management of genomic resources under the umbrella of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). The NBPGR acts as the nodal institute at the national level for the acquisition, management and genomics-based profiling of indigenous and exotic plant genetic resources and carries out related research for the sustainable growth of agriculture.

To take the vast knowledge and experience of NBPGR and BISA to a big group of scientists, an international training on “Theoretical and practical aspects of Genomic Approaches for utilisation of Crop Genetic Resources” was organised by CIMMYT-BISA and ICAR-NBPGR from March 28 – March 31, 2023. Public institutions like ICAR-IIWBR-Karnal, ICAR-NBPGR New Delhi, Punjab Agricultural University, Indian Agricultural Institute, ICAR-IASRI New Delhi, SKUAST-Jammu, ARI Pune, BHU Varanasi etc participated in this three-day training program.

The training was inaugurated by the opening remarks of Dr. Arun Kumar Joshi, MD BISA and Dr. Sundeep Kumar from ICAR-NBPGR followed by the background on the success in genomic selection for crop improvement by Dr. Uttam Kumar and a keynote lecture of Dr. PK Gupta (Emeritus Professor) on Quantitative Genetics. Prof. PK Gupta shared his experience of over 50 years in quantitative genetics. Later in the day Jose Crossa, a key expert in Genomic Selection joined the training virtually from Mexico and enlightened the participants with the basic concepts of genomic selection and genetic gain in crop plants. BISA was honoured to have two distinguished key experts – Dr. Paulino Perez Rodriguez and Osval Antonio Montesinos Lopez – who developed statistical tools such as BGLR script to develop and optimize genomic prediction models. They both were present in the physical space and shared their knowledge with the participants.

On March 31, 2023, after the final session of summary and learnings by Dr. Osval the valedictory function was organized. Feedback from all the participants was also obtained. It was concluded that the training course on genomic selection might be for 6-8 days, providing more time for the participants to practice with their own data sets. All the participants received certificates with mementoes. The training ended with a vote of thanks by Dr. Manish Vishwakarma.

Farmers’ exposure visit to BISA farm in Ludhiana

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By Uttam Kumar, Mahesh Maske and Richa Sharma Puri

Dr. Uttam Kumar, senior scientist at CIMMYT-BISA interacting with the farmers

Climate change and erratic weather patterns are making agriculture more risk-prone and challenging for smallholder farmers across the globe. Today, many crop insurance products help farmers financially and reduce the risks associated with the loss of crops during bad weather conditions. However, a more systemic plan is required to strengthen the delivery of crop insurance in India. Therefore, the Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA), with the support of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), is piloting picture-based insurance (PBI) bundled with Picture Based Advisories (PBA) services in the villages of Haryana. It provides sustainable and scalable risk management solutions to the farmers in districts like Karnal, Kurukshetra, Panipat, Ambala and Yamuna Nagar. The objective is to monitor, assess and quantify the insurance loss during a crop season. It is a simple self-reporting system accessible on any smartphone as an app and helps record the image-based data to determine the level of losses in a farmer’s field.

To add more value to the existing PIB program, BISA organised an exposure visit to one of its state-of-the-art farms in Ludhiana, Punjab. It invited around 100 farmers from 50 villages of Karnal, Kurukshetra, Ambala and Yamuna Nagar districts of Haryana. The visit was planned to sensitise the program farmers about the diverse and advanced technologies and best practices adopted by BISA at its research farm in collaboration with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and the state government of Punjab. Spread in 550 acres in Ladhowal Ludhiana, BISA aims to harness the latest genetic, digital, and resource management technologies and use research for development approaches to invigorate the region’s agriculture and food systems while enhancing productivity, resilience, livelihood, and nutrition security to meet future demands.

Dr. Uttam Kumar, Senior Scientist (Wheat breeder) at BISA farm in Ludhiana welcomed farmers and gave a brief talk on the vision, mission and partnerships of CIMMYT/BISA/ICAR with national agricultural research systems. Further, he explained in detail and gave relevant information on the research infrastructure and facility available at the BISA farm. Later, farmers got the opportunity to visit the various wheat trials under evaluation at the farm. They also got to know about the varietal diversity, precision agriculture, climate resilient production systems, farm topography, smart mechanization and partnerships of BISA to other institutions which supports leveraging international agricultural research.  

To read more about Picture Based Insurance, please click here

JIRCAS team visits BNI-wheat Trials at BISA Farms

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BNI-wheat trial at BISA farm in Jabalpur, India as on 15 March 2023. Photographer – Anindito Mukherjee/BISA

By Richa Sharma Puri & Uttam kumar

From L to R – Dr. Pramod Aggarwal, Dr. Arun Kumar Joshi, Dr. Bram Govaerts and Mitsunori Saito at JICA office in New Delhi

A new partnership between the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), and CIMMYT will seek to improve nitrogen (N) retention and reduce greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions in the wheat growing zone, focusing initially on Indo-Gangetic plains of India by developing new wheat varieties with the Biological Nitrification Inhibition (BNI) trait.

CIMMYT-BISA and JIRCAS teams during the project kick off meeting in New Delhi

The new initiative called “Project for the Establishment of Nitrogen-Efficient Wheat Production Systems in Indo-Gangetic Plains by the Development of BNI Technology” was announced on April 11, 2022, when CIMMYT’s director general, Bram Govaerts, signed the corresponding agreement with Mitsunori Saito, JICA’s chief representative in India.

The team from JIRCAS during a field visit at Ludhiana, Punjab

Thus, the research trials with BNI-trait are being carried out at CIMMYT-BISA research farms in India (Ludhiana, Jabalpur & Samastipur) and several ICAR institutions (IIWBR and CSSRI in Karnal, IARI at New Delhi). Recently, the JIRCAS-BNI team visited the BNI – wheat trials planted at CIMMYT- BISA research farms in Ludhiana (Punjab) and Jabalpur (Madhya Pradesh) where several elite wheat varieties carrying BNI – trait are undergoing field evaluations. These trials will help determine the BNI-trait expression and its impact on overall productivity. The team from JIRCAS observed some visible differences where BNI lines were performing better than the non-BNI lines under different nitrogen levels.

BNI wheat and its impact on the environment

In modern agriculture, the use of nitrogen-based fertilizers is huge. Around 70% of fertilizer applied in the field is not absorbed by the crops, thus making our farms a source of pollution. Not only this, but nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions add to the existing greenhouse effect way more than carbon dioxide. This release of Nitrogen is directly related to a nitrification process in the soil. Therefore, it’s critical to suppress the nitrification rate of agricultural soil. To combat this situation, a paper titled “Enlisting wild grass genes to combat nitrification in wheat farming: A nature-based solution” was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). It was co-authored by JIRCAS, CIMMYT, the University of the Basque Country, and the College of Bioresource Sciences, Nihon University. The paper reported the successful development of the world’s first BNI-enabled wheat – high on productivity and low on nitrogen fertilizer – mitigating global warming. This BNI wheat uses nitrogen more efficiently than conventional wheat varieties. The successful implementation of BNI-Wheat Project has huge potential not only to save the cost of fertilizer but help in reducing the greenhouse gas emission from wheat crops. The joint efforts by JIRCAS and BISA in developing this next-generation wheat may revolutionize wheat production systems across the globe.