About Us

Considering the predominance of fragmented land holdings, heterogeneity of crops and livestock and concept of farm families in the rural conditions, the model of Precision Agriculture representing the typical Indian Agricultural scenario is yet to evolve. Precision agriculture needs to go from a technology-push to application-driven approach. Opportunities for Precision Agriculture in Indian Agriculture are optimal keeping in view the recent initiatives of different national level programs in agriculture such as, Doubling Farmers Income, Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, Soil Health Card, more crop per drop, National Agricultural Market, Digital India, Digital Agriculture etc. Some of the scopes of Intelligent Indian Agriculture may be building digital nervous system for precision farming by small scale farmers with virtual joint management for order-made/market in production for customer, optimizing inputs /resources and accelerated breeding for smart crop with recent technologies of sensing and data analytics.

ICAR has initiated discussion on Precision Agriculture Research in India through 21 workshops and meetings since Aug 2018. Based on the proceedings and recommendation of these meetings, the ‘Network Program on Precision Agriculture’ (NePPA) was proposed to start initially with 16 ICAR Institutes of different domain addressing some of the challenges in Indian Agriculture. In due course, this may expand to larger scale involving many Institutes and other organization as and when required. The ICAR Network Programme on Precision Agriculture is a program of national importance cutting across all SMDs of the Council. This is being a priority area of Government of India as desired by the O/O Principal Scientific Advisor and PMO. In this context, ICT Unit of the Council Headquarter is being given the responsibility of coordinating this program having financial support from the budget component “ICT including Data Centre & Research Data Repository” of ICAR Headquarters for the Financial Year 2021-26. ICAR-IARI has been entrusted by the council to lead the program.