The Third Meeting of National Steering Committee (NSC) for reviewing the progress of the National programme on Electronics and ICT Applications in Agriculture and Environment (AgriEnIcs) sponsored by Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India (MietY), was held in Hybrid mode at ICAR-DPR, Hyderabad on 24/07/2023.
Chairman, NSC, Dr.Aloknath De in his inaugural address emphasized the importance of the programme and the urgent need to design and develop marketable products that would be beneficial to the Indian Agricultural sector in terms of productivity and profitability. Dr R.N.Chatterjee, Director, ICAR-DPR in his address stressed the importance of introducing smart technologies in livestock and poultry sector. Shri Om Krishan Singh from MeitY reiterated the expectation of the ministry for quickly developing products in Agriculture and Environmental sector as the reason for sponsoring the programme. Dr.Alokesh Ghosh, Additional Director presented the overall progress of the programme. Dr. Hena Ray, Joint Director, CDAC, Kolkata presented the progress of most of the individual projects. The committee evaluated the technical and financial progress of the projects on Smart Poultry, Cattle health, e-Quality, Apple Harvester and Air Quality for the period from Jan to 21st July 2023. The committee also evaluated the nine grand challenge projects awarded to different agencies under the programme.
Before start of the meeting the Chairman and the team visited the DPR farm to see the working of multisensory developed under the project for monitoring the environmental parameters (temperature, humidity, CO2, Ammonia, particulate matter etc) in poultry farm and also the chicken vocalization analysis laboratory established to analyse and correlate vocalization data with bird health and stress conditions and also gender determination. The Committee appreciated the progress of the work under the project.
National Steering Committee members, and Scientists from MeitY, CDAC-Kolkata, ICAR-DPR, Hyderabad, ICAR-NDRI, Kalyani ICAR-IARI, New Delhi, IIT, Kharagpur, CIPHET, Ludhiana, Shere Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences, Kashmir participated in the meeting.
