Weather and climate information plays a vital role in agricultural production and management. In order to provide the weather based information and agro-advisories needed for the taluka level farming community, India Meteorological Department (IMD) in collaboration with ICAR has set up District Agro-Met Unit (DAMU) under Gramin Krishi Mausam Seva (GKMS) scheme. This center is located at KVK, ICAR-CCARI, Old Goa.
Agro-advisory services are the farm decisions taken in response to past, current and future weather change. It includes agronomical, pest and disease management, water and soil conservation, seeds and fertilizer input management spray of insecticides, pesticides and weedicides etc.
This helps the farmers to take weather related sensitive decisions like sowing / transplanting of seedlings, pesticides, weedicides and fertilizer application, scheduling timely irrigation, timely harvesting of the crops, post-harvest storage of the harvested crop, forewarnings of livestock related diseases and vaccination of livestock and poultry birds. District Agro-Met Unit (DAMU) for North Goa district has been setup and functioning at Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK), ICAR-CCARI, Old Goa in which it covers 5 talukas of North Goa district namely; Bardez, Bicholim, Pernem, Sattari and Tiswadi. Weather conditions and weather warnings are received from Regional Meteorological Centre, Mumbai and Meteorological Centre, Goa. Based on this information, weather based Agro-Advisory bulletins are prepared and issued to farmers on every Tuesday and Friday. These bulletins are prepared in both English and Konkani languages. For disseminating the same 130 village wise WhatsApp groups has been created, through which nearly 6000 farmers are receiving weather related information and Agro-Advisory bulletins. The Agro-Advisory bulletins are also available in websites like https://ccari.icar.gov.in, https://kvknorthgoa.icar.gov.in, https://ahvs.goa.gov.in, http://fisheries.goa.gov.in, http://www.imdgoa.gov.in . It is ensured that, in future more farmers will be benefitted out of this.
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