Use of Remote Sensing Technology to Map Crop Cultivation AreaHome

New Delhi: To provide an accurate estimate of the likely production of the respective crops, so to map the area under potato and onion cultivation for the entire country, the agriculture ministry plans to use remote sensing technology.

In the next phase, this remote sensing technology would be extended to cover orchards. an agriculture ministry official said, "We are working on producing robust estimates of the area and production of important crops like potato and onion for the whole country through remote sensing."

Onto the Bhuvan platform, which is a software application browser which explores 2D/3D representation of topography, the department was working on uploading maps of fruit crops, he said.

Officials informed that, currently, in three major districts of Karnataka and other states, details of mango orchards are being worked out and on Bhuvan their database creation is being done, and also in the major mango producing districts of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, maps on areas under mango cultivation maps have already been finalised.

Under a project called 'Coordinated Horticulture Assessment and Management using Geo-Informatics' (Chaman), the ministry is also working on developing a methodology for precision farming and assessment of major vegetable crops. This project was launched in September 2014 and this project is targeted to be completed in three years at an estimated cost of Rs 13.38 crore.

The ministry stated, the methodology for estimation of areas under other crops like tomato, chilli, mango, banana and citrus has also been developed.

In Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana, the Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute is reviewing the progress of the data collected on the area and production of horticulture crops and the final report will be submitted by August 2017.

Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/