KORBA, Jul 4 Agriculture College and Research Centre, Katghora, on Saturday, organised national online symposium on the subject ‘Challenges and Strategies to reduce the effect of environmental changes on agriculture and forests’.
The two-session symposium begun at 11am at the hands of Dr SK Patil, Vice Chancellor of Indira Gandhi Agricultural University, Raipur. Board members Anand Mishra, Bodhram Kanwar, Dr RK Vajpayee (Director of Research Services), Dr GK Das (Director, Education) and Dr MP Thakur attended the program as special guests. Mishra said that small world is beautiful. He expressed worry regarding the changes in environment due to mining and other activities. Bodhram Kanwar stressed on increasing water harvesting, preventing soil erosion and conserving biodiversity.
Dr Vajpayee said that the gases reponsible for global warming, such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and CFC are very harmful. Farmers are using large quantities of nitrogen based fertilizers, which is not good and it should be replaced with bio manure. After that, Dr GK Das spoke about the rising temperature in other countries and said that crop concentration in the state is 137 percent. He shared information about selecting crops according to dry weather. Dr MP Thakur said that swift change in weather affects pathogens, leading to evolution of new varieties. This has an adverse effect on crops.
Speaking as the chief resource person, Dr Ajit Singh Nayan, Director of Research Services at Govind Vallabh Pant Agriculture and Technology University, Uttarakhand, spoke about adopting different strategies for the climatic changes and its effect on agriculture. Several other agriculturists spoke on the subject and provided valuable information. The program was successfully anchored by Dr Abhay Bisen and Dr Yogita Kashyap, while vote of thanks was delivered by Dr Tarun Thakur, Head of Department of Environmental Science at Indira Gandhi Tribal University, Amarkantak. Scientist GP Bhaskar, guest teacher Dr Harishchandra Darro, Sonali Harinkhere, Payal Vyas, Ruparani Diwakar and others were present in the webinar.
