The Quinquennial Review Team under the Chairmanship of Dr RK Malik, Consultant, CIMMYT -India held its meeting during 07-09 June, 2024 at PJTSAU, Hyderabad to review the work done by the South and East-zone centers of AICRP-Weed Management for the period 2018-2023. The meeting was attended by the team members Dr SK Jalali, Dr PG Shah, Dr Simerjeet Kaur and Dr RP Dubey, member-secretary, scientists of AICRP-WM centers viz. AAU Anand, UAS Bengaluru, TNAU Coimbatore, KAU Thrissur, PJTSAU Hyderabad, PDKV Akola, OUAT Bhubaneswar, IGKV Raipur, BCKV Kalyani, AAU, Jorhat and UAS Dharwad, PAJANCOA Puducherry, ANGRAU Guntur and BAU, Sabour. Dr P Raghu Rami Reddy, Director Research, PJTSAU during the inaugural session apprised the QRT of weed problems in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.
The Principal Investigators of participating centers presented their salient achievements during 2018-23. The Chairman appreciated the good work being done by the centers and emphasized to re-orient the research programs towards solving the state specific weed problems. There is a need to prioritize the research programs keeping in view the limited human resource and funding. The AICRP-WM centers where residue analysis facility is not available, they should collaborate with the AINP on Pesticide residues work for generating herbicide residue data in crop produce, soil and ground water. External funding agencies should be approached with sound project proposals on pressing weed issues. Weed survey is an important activity for formulating strategic weed management research in various ecologies.
The QRT visited the Drone Academy and J-Farm situated at PJTSAU and interacted with the scientists. Issues related to herbicide application by drones were discussed at length.
