Agriculture Ministry has invited expression of interest (EoI) by November 7 from start ups/companies to work with the government for leveraging their innovations in nine specific areas such as weather-based information products and services, crop yield estimation and weather-pest modelling.
The Ministry has identified nine broad areas where companies are already working and all the proposals will be evaluated by a 17-member screening committee, headed by an additional secretary of the ministry and members drawn from ICAR, IIT, IIM and NITI Aayog, officials said.
During consultative process, the committee will seek presentations from applicants to identify specific technologies in targeted interventions relevant to the Indian agriculture sector that have the potential to be scaled up, according to a government note seen by businessline.
The committee shall examine the concept, value proposition and action plan of the idea to understand the potential feasibility and its scalability, and accordingly recommend suitable entities, which will be finalised by Agriculture Ministry. The selected projects will be partially funded by government through grants, sources said.
Weather-based info
The Ministry invites companies to propose the adoption of advanced satellite meteorology techniques for obtaining weather data with a 1-3 km granularity. The Ministry also wants simplified and scalable innovative models to generate crop yield estimates of major crops such as paddy and wheat at village/panchayat level.
The technology-driven solution should undertake periodic assessments during crop season starting from a month after sowing till the end of season, with increasing accuracies.
PEST ATTACKS
Taking note of the pink bollworm attack in coton crops that caused havoc in many northern States this year, the Ministry wants solution for weather-pest modelling and farmer advisories in which data-driven models will be preferred.
The ministry seeks collaboration with private entrepreneurs in various areas, including mapping soil organic carbon at the farm level, assessing carbon sequestration potential in crop lands and current cropping systems, conducting photo analytics and crop assessments, and evaluating the impact of hailstorms on crops.
