Regional Consultation Meeting of SAARC Agriculture Council on “Advanced Water Management Options for Sustainable Crop Production in South Asia” organized

5 - 6 April, 2021

A Virtual Regional Consultation Meeting on “Advanced Water Management Options for Sustainable Crop Production in South Asia” was organized by the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Agriculture Council (SAC), Dhaka from 5th to 6th April, 2021. The ICAR-Indian Institute of Water Management, Bhubaneswar, Odisha acted as the Technical Partner of the Meeting.

The Special Guest of the inaugural session, Dr. Suresh Kumar Chaudhari, Deputy Director General (Natural Resource Management), ICAR emphasized on the need to strengthen the research efforts on canal automation, conjunctive use of surface and groundwater, crop diversification in water scarce areas, IoT based micro irrigation system and evolving techniques to reduce the greenhouse gas emission and water and energy footprints.

Earlier, Dr. Md. Baktear Hossian, Director, SAC and Dr. Sreekanth Attaluri, Senior Programme Specialist (Crops) & Coordinator, SAC delivered the welcome addresses.

The ICAR nominated Dr. A. Mishra, Director, ICAR-IIWM and Dr. P.S. Brahmanand, Principal Scientist, ICAR-IIWM as Experts to represent India in the meeting.

Around 14 Country Experts from 7 Member States of SAARC namely - India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Afghanistan participated in the meeting.

(Source: ICAR-Indian Institute of Water Management, Bhubaneswar, Odisha)