Book of Extended summaries ISDA

International Conference on Reimagining Rainfed Agro-ecosystems: Challenges &
Opportunities during 22-24, December 2022 at ICAR-CRIDA, Hyderabad
Methodology
To address the climate vulnerabilities of the district, KVK Kullu selected one representative
village for project implementation. Chhoel Gadauri village of Kullu block of the district
Kullu was identified for technology demonstration under NICRA project based on the impact
of climate change on agriculture in the village. A baseline was established, constraints were
flagged and an action plan was prepared in consultation with the farmers and the innovative
village climate risk management committee (VCRMC) created in the project to enable
participatory decision-making and empowerment. Climatic variability in terms of historical
rainfall trends over the last few decades was worked out which indicates that dry spells of 10-
20 days are increasing particularly during Kharif season. Erratic rainfall, drought, and an
increase in the temperature were the main constraints in the village. Therefore, to mitigate the
drought to some extent, KVK decided to implement rainwater harvesting for life-saving
irrigation. Water from perennial sources was brought from about 1.0 km through the span. A
series of interlinked water storage tanks were constructed in the village which was later upscaled
with the help of developmental departments. Warmer winter in lower elevations has
resulted in the shifting of apples to higher elevations (Rana et. al. 2016). To counter the
effect of climate change, farmers were motivated to plant pomegranates, which requires a hot
and dry climate and are suitable for the changing climate in lower areas of the district. The
demonstration on pomegranate cultivation in 15 ha area was conducted in the farmer’s field.
Based on percent deviation in rainfall during the Kharif season the year 2014, 2016, and 2020
were cited as stress years. The data on yield and net returns were averaged for three
consecutive years.
Results
The major interventions under site-specific rainwater harvesting strategies were the
construction of water storage tanks for water harvesting and to utilization of harvested water
efficiently during the dry spell and critical stages of growth in rainfed areas. To reduce the
effect of drought, a water storage capacity of 20.5 lakhs liter was created by constructing 65
water storage tanks since the inception of the NICRA project with the help of developmental
departments. The harvested water was utilized for supplementary lifesaving irrigations at
critical stages of the crop during dry spells. Demonstrations on diversification towards highvalue
cash crop tomato in Kharif, garlic in rabi season were conducted against cropping
sequence of maize- wheat in the rainfed area. In tomato crops 4-5 life-saving irrigations were
given through water-carrying pipes. During the Rabi season in garlic 3-4 numbers of
lifesaving, irrigations were given through the sprinkler method. The performance during
stress and a normal year of rainfall was quite high as compared to the farmer's practice in the
rainfed areas. The average net return for three years (Table 1) was recorded at Rs 3.39
lakhs/ha from tomato and Rs 23993/ha from maize during the Kharif season in the stress
Climate resilient agriculture for risk mitigation
319 | Page