Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has launched a network project to study the impact of climate change on agriculture, Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar told the Lok Sabha.
Replying to a query in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday, he said ICAR has launched a flagship network project to study the impact of climate change on agriculture, including crops, livestock, horticulture and fisheries, to develop and promote climate resilient technologies in agriculture to address the vulnerable areas of the country, and to help the districts and regions prone to extreme weather conditions like droughts, floods, frost, heat waves, etc to cope with such extremes.
Under this programme, the pest dynamics concerning climate change under field conditions were studied through database development on diseases, insect pests, and weather of crops of importance across 12 agro-climatic zones, he said.
Stating that the emergence, transmission and establishment of animal diseases are also influenced by climate change, he said ICAR has been studying the impact of diseases and insect pests under changing climates in various crops and animals.
Climate related diseases
Climatic conditions influence the outbreaks of some diseases such as lumpy skin disease, avian influenza, African swine fever, classical swine fever, theileriosis, gastrointestinal parasitism, and anthrax, etc.
Amongst the field crops, the diseases like alterneria blight in groundnut; blast, sheath rot and blight in rice; dry root rot in chickpea; stem rot in mustard and vegetable; thrips in chillies; and white fly in various crops had direct co-relation to changes in climate, Tomar said.
Similarly, the effect of the rise in sea surface temperature and its impact is visible on fish habitat, changes in phenology, tropho-dynamics, abundance and catch of fish species, as well as the distributional shift of fishes and shift in the breeding season, the Minister said.
ICAR has developed climate-resilient varieties in different crops tolerant to diseases and insect pests. Since 2014, a total of 1,752 climate-resilient varieties were developed. Besides, 68 location-specific climate resilient technologies have been developed and popularised for wider adoption among the farming communities, he said.
Organic farming
To a separate query on organic farming, Tomar said there is an increase in the quantity and value of organic products exported from India in 2020-21 compared to 2019-20.
The quantity of Indian organic products exported was 8.88 lakh tonnes (lt) during 2020-21 as against 6.38 lt in 2019-20, an increase of 39.18 per cent. The value of these products increased from $689.10 million in 2019-20 to $1,040.95 million in 2020-21.