Webinar on ‘Remote Sensing and Drone Applications in Agriculture – Research opportunities’ organised by WTC, PJTSAU on 17-07-2021

A webinar on “Remote Sensing and Drone Applications in Agriculture – Research Opportunities” was organized by Water Technology Centre, PJTSAU, Rajendranagar on 17-07-2021 and about 163 members have participated in the webinar. The webinar was presided by Hon’ble Vice Chancellor, Dr. V. Praveen Rao garu, PJTSAU and welcome by Dr. R. Jagdeeshwar, Director of Research, PJTSAU and was graced by University officers, PJTSAU, Alumni of the University, officials from industries, Scientists from ICAR institutes, ADs of the Agriculture and Agril. Engineering colleges, ADRs, Heads of the department, Research schemes and research station heads, staff and students of the University also participated in the webinar. The programme was started with the welcome address by Dr. R. Jagdeeshwar, Director of Research, PJTSAU and Dr K. Avil Kumar introduced the guest speaker, Dr. S. Pazhanivelan, Professor and Head, Department of Remote Sensing and Geographical Information System, TNAU, Coimbatore. In his presentation, Dr. S. Pazhanivelan, explained about the wide applications of Remote Sensing and drone technology in the field of agricultural research, linking the Remote Sensing technology to access credit to the farmers, integrating satellite data with drone sensors which can be linked to the mobile applications to generate crop information system to help in crop insurance under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bhima Yojna. He also narrated about the importance of SAR Remote Sensing for crop varietal discrimination and assessing the yield gap. Developing the mobile app for decision support system and monitoring the drought and disaster studies to ultimately develop the spatial agriculture information platform. Drone applications for development of pest and disease monitoring indices, standardizing spray protocols and calibrating drone based spreading system. Dr. V. Praveen Rao garu, in his presidential remarks, stressed on producing more using less and use of frontier technologies like nano technology, artificial intelligence, deep learning, block chain, use of drones, advanced remote sensing technologies to solve the problems in Agriculture. Vote of thanks was delivered by Dr. T. L. Neelima, Scientist (Agro), Water Technology Centre.