2. 2
Content
Introduction
Objectives
Why Agromet Advisory Services
Information Needs of Farmers/ Planners
Targeted Agromet Advisory to Farmer
District/ Block level Agromet Advisory Services System
Sample Bulletin
GKMS Awareness Pragramme
Success story
Economic Impact Assessment of AAS
Case study-1
Case study-2
Conclusion
3. 3
INTRODUCTION
Agrometeorological Advisory Service (AAS) are being rendered
by India Meteorological Department (IMD), Ministry of Earth
Sciences (MoES) under Gramin Krishi Mausam Sewa (GKMS)
scheme as a step towards contribution to weather information-
based crop/livestock management strategies and operations
dedicated to enhancing crop production and food security.
Weather forecast based agromet advisory provided to the farmers
at district level through a network of existing 130 Agro-Met Field
Units (AMFUs) located in each Agro Climatic Zone (ACZ).
These agromet advisories are prepared and disseminated by
AMFUs twice a week (Tuesday and Friday) covering 690 districts
under (GKMS) scheme.
Keeping the need for Agromet Advisory Services (AAS) to be
more crop and location-specific to address wide variations in
weather within the, IMD is in the process of implementing block
level AAS by establishing 530 District Agromet Units (DAMUs) in
the premises of Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVK) in collaboration with
Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR).
So there was a need to bring Standard Operating Procedure
(SOP) for advisory preparation in order to have uniform standard
advisory throughout the country.
4. 4
OBJECTIVE
Field visits and identification of stage and state of the crops
Problem identification
Receiving weather forecast from IMD
Discussion with Agromet Advisory Board
Preparation of Agromet Advisory Bulletin in both regional and
English Language on every Tuesday and Friday based on
medium range weather forecast and stage & state of the crops.
What Are the Weather Parameters/Elements?
• Weather is made up of multiple parameters, including air
temperature, atmospheric (barometric) pressure, humidity,
precipitation, solar radiation and wind. Each of these factors can
be measured to define typical weather patterns and to determine
the quality of local atmospheric conditions.
Why Agromet Advisory Services ?
▪ Weather & Climate information are ECONOMICALLY important
for all tiers of decision making and at all stages of Agricultural
System.
➢ Weather and Climate information – Past, present & future
(nowcast to seasonal scale).
➢ Tiers – Farmers, input providers, line departments, marketing
& processing industries AND planners at different levels.
➢ Stages – Pre-sowing to post harvesting to market.
5. 5
▪ Minor changes in weather conditions can have a major impact on
agricultural output - sensitive crop stages.
Information Needs For Farmers/Planners
▪ Local specific changes & variability in weather & climate.
▪ Weather forecast-
Nowcast, Short & Medium Range, EWS on Extreme Events.
Extended range, Seasonal Scale.
▪ Crop Stresses & Pest/disease conditions and their prognosis.
▪ Weather/climate based farm management options considering
weather sensitivity of crop stage.
▪ Personalized advisory for farmers.
10. 10
Agromet Bulletin based on ERF
✓
IMD extended range forecast (2-weeks) along with summary
given to ICAR-CRIDA.
✓ Based on this forecast advisories for tactical decisions on
agricultural operations are prepared.
✓ Issued on every Friday.
✓ Disseminated to National/ State level planners, AMFUs/
DAMUs.
11. 11
Product/ Tools used in AAS from AICRPAM,
SAUs & Other Networks
➢Agro climate characterization
➢ Crop weather calendar
➢ Crop growth model
➢ Pest weather calendar
➢ Crop wise Climatic risk matrix
➢ NAAS bulletin
➢ District Crop Contingency plan
➢Standardized Precipitation Index
➢Aridity Anomaly Maps
➢NDVI and its departure from previous week
➢Vegetation Condition Index
➢ Soil Moisture maps
12. 12
Agro climate characterization:- The agro-climate is nothing but an
extension of the climate classification keeping in view the suitability to
agriculture.
Crop Weather Calender:- Crop weather calenders allow the weather
forecast to visualise the type of weather warning that needs to be issued
to the farmer at a specified point of time/real and for a given
location/region.
Crop Growth Model:- Crop growth models are computer software
programs that can simulate daily growth (e.g- Biomass, yield) and
development (e.g- emergence, flowering,harvest) of crops such as wheat
maize and potato.
Pest weather calender:- Weather is related to many pest/insect and
disease, which are bad for the development of healthy crops. If we able to
predict disease or pest outbreaks by using weather, then we can prevent
or decrease high losses to a minimum.
Crop Wise climatic Risk Matrix:- Factor determining the rainy
season characterisation farming systems, yield crop production and
livestock rearing.
NAAS Bulletin:- NAAS bulletin based on Extended range forecasting
system from IMD.
District Crop Contingency Plan (DACP):- are technical
document aimed to ready rechner for line department and farming
community on prevailing farming system and technological interventions
to manage various weather aberration such as drought, flood, cyclone,
hailstroms, heat and cold waves.
Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI):- SPI is used index to
characterize meteorological drought on a range of timescales. On shot
13. 13
timescale, the SPI is closely related to soil moisture, while at longer
timescale the SPI can be related to ground water and reservoir strong.
Aridity Anomaly Maps:- Gives information about the moisture stress
experience by growing plant.
Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI):- NDVI is
measured of the amount and vigor of vegetation on the land surface and
NDVI spatial composite image are developed to more easily distinguish
green vegetation from bare soils.
NDVI= NIR-RED/NIR+RED
Vegetation Condition Index (VCI):- Compares the current NDVI to
the range of values observed in the same period in previous year. It
express in % and give an idea where the observed value is situated
between extreme value in the previous year.
Soil Moisture Maps:- is an Important aspect of precision irrigation
water management. Soil moisture content affect several factor such as
vegetation cover, evapotranspiration (ET) and crop growth. There result
can be useful as a good indicator for irrigation control at large scale.
14. 14
Multichannel Dissemination
Public Private Partnership (PPP) Partners
IFFCO IKSL
NOKIA
MAHENDRA
RELIANCE FOUNDATION
Farmers feedback
Through mobile & Apps developed by SAUs/ICAR
Agromet Advisory
Bulletin/SMS by AMFUs
Personal
Contact
Radio News
Papers
Krishi
Vigyan
State Agril.
Dept.
Farmer
Television
SMS
on
mobi
le
Website
15. 15
Agrimet web portal – overview
http://www.imdagrimet.gov.in/
Purpose – To assemble and cater all the Agriculture Meteorology
related information at single domain
16. 16
GKMS – Farmers Awareness Programme
Approx. 75 farmers from the village of
Mirpur, Roorkee and Purnapur of
Haridwar district- 2019
SKUAST-J Organises Programme
on Agromet Advisory Services
25/02/2020
17. 17
Performance of Potato with AAS for
management of Late Blight in Diphu Assam
Not followed advisories Followed advisories
Variety Yield(kg/ha) Net Return(Rs/ha) B:C Ratio
Advisories Advisories Advisories
Followed Not Followed Followed Not Followed Followed Not followed
pokhraj 21563 9490 142350 23125 2.94 1.32
Jyoti 16790 9019 96425 18415 2.32 1.26
18. 18
Feedback & success stories
Kolasib (Mizoram): Issued advisory to Bilkhawtlir for controlling leaf
folder in rice as there was continuous rainfall during second half of
Sep, 2016. Yield and income was increased by 40% and Rs. 16800/-
per hac, respectively.
Lamphelpat (Manipur):
• SRI method was suggested to Mr. Y. Romeo, earlier farmers used
80 kg, but later: 8 kg/ha. Increased in yield was from 3.5 to 7.8
t/ha.
• T. Sataban was regularly provided with weather information and
crop advisories. The yield increased from 0.8 t/ha to 6.0t/ha
from (rice)
• R.D. Peter, a fish farmer, was advised to harvest rainfall during
monsoon, -maintaining water level after monsoon season. The
farmer earned Rs. 10,000/- to 20,000/- from spawns and @ Rs.2,
00,000/- from fish fingerlings.
19. 19
Economic Impact Assessment Of AAS
Survey conducted by National Council of Applied Economic
Research (NCAER) in 2015.
❑95% of farmers surved experienced improved accuracy &
reliability.
❑Incremental profit assessed to be 25% of net income.
❑Annual Economic Profit on 4-principal crops (wheat, paddy,
sugarcane and cotton), assessed to be Rs. 38,463 crs in 2010
which raised to Rs. 42,000 crs in 2015.
❑Service has the potential of generating net economic benefit up to
Rs. 3.3 lakh crores on the 22-principal crops when AAS is utilized
by All farming households in the country.
Operations Where Weather Information were used for field level intervention
1. Cropping
Pattern
2. Sowing &
Harvesting
3. Irrigation
Scheduling
4. Mitigation in moisture stress
5. Fertilliser
Application
6. Pesticide
Spray
7. Dairy Hatchery etc 8. Machine buying
20. 20
Case Study-1
INTRODUCTION
India is an agriculture based country; the SW monsoon season is
the main rainfall season for the almost whole country (except
Tamil Nadu which gets rain during NE monsoon season).
The success and failure of crops in the large parts of the country
depend on the monsoon rain. There are numerous and diverse
sources of weather and climate-related risks in agriculture; limited
water resources, drought, land degradation, erosion,
desertification, hail, flooding, early frosts and many more.
21. 21
Effective weather and climate information and advisory services
can ensure the decision-making of farmers and improve their
management of agricultural risks.
Such services can help to develop sustainable and economically
viable agricultural systems, improve production and quality,
reduce losses and risks, decrease production costs, increase
efficiency in the use of water, labour and energy, conserve natural
resources, and decrease pollution by agricultural chemicals or
other agents that contribute to the degradation of the
environment.
Thus, the importance of the Agromet Advisory Services that have
now been established at district levels in India.
To fulfill the present and future needs, India Meteorological
Department (IMD) has established a network of manual
observatories, automatic weather stations, automatic rain gauges,
ground based radar network. The Agro-meteorological Advisory
Service (AAS) rendered by IMD, Ministry of Earth Sciences
(MoES) is a mechanism to apply relevant meteorological
information to help the farmer make the most efficient use of
natural resources, with the aim of improving agricultural
production; both in quantity and quality.
AGROMET ADVISORY BULLETINS
The Agromet Advisory Bulletins are issued at three levels district,
state, and at national.
The district level bulletins are issued by Agro-Met Field Units
(AMFUs) and embrace crop specific advisories including field
crops, horticultural crops, and livestock.
22. 22
The State Level bulletin jointly prepared by State Meteorological
Centre of IMD and AMFUs is a composite of district bulletins
helping to identify the concerned districts of the state as well as
plan to supply appropriate farm inputs such as seeds, irrigation
water, fertilizer, pesticides etc.
The bulletins are also used by a large number of other agencies
including fertilizer, pesticide industries.
Agromet advisories help to increase profits by consistently
delivering actionable weather information, analysis and decision
support for farming situations such as; to manage pests through
the forecast of relative humidity, temperature and wind; manage
irrigation through rainfall & temperature forecasts; protect the crop
from thermal stress through forecasting of extreme temperature
etc.
WEATHER FORECAST AND AGROMET INFORMATION
Quantitative district level weather forecast up to 5 days is issued
from first June 2008. The product comprises of quantitative
forecasts for weather parameters viz. rainfall, maximum and
minimum temperatures, wind speed and direction, relative
humidity and cloudiness.
The products were disseminated to Regional Meteorological
Centres and Meteorological Centres of IMD located across the
country.
IMD mandate to issue weather forecast for different time scale in
advance, it provides an opportunity to efficiently minimize the loss
from adverse weather and took the benefit from benevolent
weather.
23. 23
❑ GRAMIN KRISHI MAUSAM SEWA
▪ India Meteorological Department (IMD) is rendering district level
weather based agromet advisory service named as "Gramin
Krishi Mausam Sewa" since 2008 in the country to cope up with
weather and climatic risks and uncertainties.
▪ GKMS is multi disciplinary and multi-institutional project. It
involves all stakeholders such as State Agricultural Universities
(SAUs), Indian Council for Agriculture Research (ICAR), Krishi
Vigyan Kendra (KVKs) Department of Agriculture & Cooperation
and Farmers' Welfare, State Department of Agriculture, NGOs,
Media Agencies etc.
▪ Under GKMS scheme weather-based crop and locale-specific
agro-advisories for 633 rural districts are prepared and
disseminated to farmers deploying various modes of information
dissemination e.g. radio, television, print media, internet, Kisan
Call Centres and mobile phones.
▪ As a part of GKMS, it is proposed to establish 240 District
Agromet Units (DAMUs) at KVKs at each district will be included
in a phased manner .
▪ Service delivery at village level will be established using all the
dissemination channels including DD Kisan, Kisan portal, the
Ministry of IT and the Department of Electronics and IT (DeitY),
the Department of Post, CSC etc. and other initiatives under
Digital India Movement.
24. 24
WEATHER RISK MANAGEMENT TOOLS
The emerging weather and climate risk clearly offer new risk
management tools and opportunities for agriculture.
Identifying the location wise risk to weather, the time period during
which risk is prevalent and further quantifying and designing a
weather risk management strategy based on an index is more
relevant to neutralize the risk in agriculture.
Under the GKMS scheme, more focus has been started to be
given to using the crop simulation model to decide crop
management strategies, for the given weather condition.
This will help the farmers and planners in tactical and strategical
decisions regarding irrigation scheduling and efficient water
management in both irrigated and rainfed agriculture system.
Result
Farmers need both weather and climate services for better crop
production.
Agromet Advisory services are the provision of accurate and
locally-appropriate climate and weather information play a vital on
risk mitigation in agriculture.
At the district level, AAS is underway to extend up to sub-
district/block level with dissemination up to village level to meet
the end user’s requirements in both the irrigated and rainfed
systems.
Establishment of 660 DAMUs in each district of India at KVK is
under pipeline which includes 130 existing AMFUs till 2019 for the
weather forecast. So that small and marginal farmers will be
benefitted by these services.
26. 26
INTRODUCTION
➢ Weather is one of the most important factors determining success
or failure of agricultural production. It effects on every phase of
growth and development of plant.
Any variability in the weather during the crop season, such as
delay in the monsoon, excessive rains, flood, droughts, spells of
too-high or too-low temperatures would affect the crop growth and
finally the quality and quantity of the yield.
The losses in crop can be reduced by doing proper crop
management in time by timely and accurate weather forecasts.
Weather forecast also provides guidelines for selection of crops
best suited to the anticipated climatic conditions.
The objective of the weather forecasting is to advice the farmers
on the actual and expected weather and its impact on the various
day-to-day farming operations i.e. sowing, weeding, time of
pesticides spray, irrigation scheduling, fertilizer application etc.
and overall crop management.
Weather forecast helps to increase agriculture production, reduce
losses, risks, reduce costs of inputs, improve quality of yield,
increase efficiency in the use of water, labor and energy and
reduce pollution with judicious use of agricultural chemicals.
The benefit by the farmers using agro met advisory bulletin and
weather forecast for making farm level decisions by farmers from
different village have been discussed in this paper.
27. 27
Materials and Methods
The Integrated Agro met Advisory Services located in the Kanpur
region, C.S. Azad Univ. of Agri. and Tech., Kanpur has been serving
the farming community in and around NCR.
Progressive farmers have been taking keen interest in the agro-
advisories and are the foremost beneficiaries.
The major objective of this programme is to advise timely and need-
based crop management practices.
Weather forecast on rainfall, maximum and minimum temperature,
wind speed, wind direction, cloud cover, maximum and minimum
humidity are being received on every Tuesday and Friday from IMD,
New Delhi.
Once the forecast was received, the experts’ opinion from different
disciplines was obtained. Based on the advice, the agro advisories
are being prepared on every Tuesday and Friday in Hindi as well as
in English
These advisories are sent to IMD for preparation of national bulletins
and are uploaded on the IMD website (www.imdagrimet.gov.in) in
both Hindi and English.
Bulletins are regularly communicated to the farmers on real time
basis through telephone/ E-mail/SMS. Agro-met advisory bulletins
are also sent by E-mail to local Hindi newspapers for publication.
The bulletins are also sent to All India Radio through E-mail
messages.
The weather forecast based agro-advisory bulletin contains a
summary of previous weeks’ weather, deviation of weather from the
normal value, weather forecast information for the next five days,
28. 28
crop management, which is based on weather forecast and giving
warning to the farmers well in advance, regarding rainfall variation, its
amount and other weather variables including pest/disease problems.
Weather forecast and weather based agromet advisories help in
increasing the economic benefit to the farmers by suggesting them
the suitable management practices according to the weather
conditions.
A study was, therefore, undertaken on adaptation of agromet
advisory bulletin and economic impact of agromet advisory services
for wheat and carrot during Rabi 2019-20 and for rice during Kharif
2019.
For assessing the impacts of agromet advisory services, users of
agromet advisory services (AAS) and non-users of agromet advisory
services (non AAS) were selected for wheat, carrot and rice crop.
Table 1: Economic impact of AAS on wheat (Rs./acre) during Rabi 2019-
20
Type Land/
nursery
preparatio
n & Sowing
Seed Fertilizer
&
Manure
Pesticides/
Insecticide
/
Herbicide
Irrigatio
n
Harvesting
&
Threshing
Input
benefit
Yield
(q/acr
e
(Rs) Net
profit
AAS 2187.9 1367.42670.1 788.3 1984.84034.8 13033.3
17.2 23660.0
Non-
AAS
2322.4 1432.7714.5 644.7 2970.13784.8 13869.5
17.4 23865.1
Benefit134.5 65.3 44.4 143.6 185.3 -250.0 836.20.2 205.0 1041.2
29. 29
Table 2: Economic impact of AAS on Rice (Rs./acre) during Kharif 2019
Type Land/ nursery
preparation &
Sowing
Seed Fertilizer &
Manure
Pesticides/
Insecticide/
Herbicide
Irrigation Harvesting &
Threshing
Input
benefit
Yield
(q/acre )
(Rs) Net
profit
AAS 5152 454.4 1688 1300 2816 2808 14218.4 23.1 26663.6
Non-AAS5160 463.4 1701.6 1674 3456 2834 15289 22.98 25521.0
Benefit 8.0 9.0 13.6 374 640 26 1070.6 0.12 1142.6 2213.2
Result
The studies showed that the application of agromet advisory
bulletin, based on current and forecasted weather is a useful tool
for enhancing the production and income.
AAS farmers received weather forecast based agro-advisories,
including optimum use of inputs for different farm operations.
Due to judicious and timely utilization of inputs, production cost for
the AAS farmers reduced.
The increased yield level and reduced cost of cultivation led to
increased net returns.
30. 30
Conclusion
Awareness on weather based agro advisories will support farmers
on decision making and reduce the crop risk.
The farmers expect weather forecast twice in a week, to be timely
and accurate forecast at various stage of crops and for livestock.
Presently DAMU scheme operating at KVK, provides weather
based agro advisory services twice in a week to farmers for
various crop stages.
Further, awareness is to be created to realize that they should
also need to follow weather forecasts from the selection of crop to
post harvest in order to achieve better productivity and good
income.
Based on this study’s fieldwork, the villages’ uptake of agro-met
information appeared to be rather low and subscribers have most
likely not reached its potential.
These platforms represented possibilities to contextualize agro-
met information, and therefore translate information to timely and
appropriate action suited to the specific local context.
31. 31
REFERENCE
Bhatta, G.D.; Aggarwal, P.K. Coping with weather adversity and
adaptation to climatic variability:A cross-country study of
smallholder farmers in South Asia. Clim. Dev. 2015, 8, 145–157.
[CrossRef
Agricultural Meteorology Division (AMD); India Meteorological
Department (IMD). Annual Progress Report 2015–2016. AMD &
IMD: Pune, India. Available online:
http://www.imdagrimet.gov.in/sites/default/files/APR%202015-
16_final_1.pdf (accessed on 11 August 2017).
Lobo, C.; Chattopadhyay, N.; Rao, K.V. Making smallholder
farming climate-smart integrated agrometeorological services.
Econ. Political Wkly. 2017, 1, 53–58.
IMD Publication No: MoES/IMD/AASD/SOP/01(2020)/02
Website: www.cseindia.org
