The Hindu Business Line : DST plans real-time mapping of standing crops

It will enable us to monitor crops and take critical decisions. We would also be able to advise farmers on inputs required to ensure that his crop stays healthy, says Mr Kapil Sibal.

Vinson Kurian

Thiruvananthapuram, Oct 1 The Department of Science and Technology (DST) intends to soon roll out a mechanism to collect real-time data on health/stress status of standing crops and to advise State Governments and other stakeholders on how best to deal with it.

The real-time monitoring of crops will be an invaluable input to the Central and State governments to make timely interventions through critical decisions on support price, credit availability, import policies, insurance schemes and irrigation schedules.

“This will enable us to monitor crops and take critical decisions. We would also be able to advise the farmer on inputs required to ensure that his crop stays healthy,” said Mr Kapil Sibal, Union Minister for Science and Technology.

“We believe that informed decision-making in this manner would ultimately leave more money in the farmer’s hands,” he told Business Line here. All agricultural crops have been mapped for the purpose and a ‘biomass index’ developed.

Satellite data

Data on biomass is collected from a range of remotely sensed data of a number of satellites, both Indian and foreign. There are a number of bands in each satellite which picks up data of biomass on a village-to-village basis. Each band of each satellite has different characteristics.

A DST team has worked on these bands using a technique called “principal component analysis” to arrive at a composite digital image which combines data from different bands of different satellites. The biomass index has been developed based on this composite digital image.

This provides a complex computational challenge involving the development of suitable algorithms. The biomass index so developed is a numerical quantity, which can be used to identify crops, assess acreage and determine the health or stress of crop.

“It’s all basically collection of data… and using an algorithm for the purpose of determining various parameters to come to certain conclusions,” Mr Sibal said.

This will be a very innovative method of assessing crop composition, crop productivity and crop health on a weekly basis. It is possible to have almost complete data at the village level. The method has been tested and validated on a pilot basis.

The methodology makes use of data from a variety of satellites and most of this is in public domain and freely available. It is, therefore, cheap and has the advantage of an “open source”.