Professional Information
Area of specialization Soil Science & Agricultural Chemistry
Area of interest Site specific nutrient management, Geoinformatics applications in soil resourses assessment, precision farming
Number of institute projects completed 19
Number of Institute projects being handled 1
Number of externally funded projects completed 12
Technologies developed 1.
Site specific nutrient management (SSNM) technology using QUEFTS model for cassava, sweet potato, elephant foot yam, yams and taro. Seventy on-farm validation experiments were conducted during the past 14 years across major growing areas in India under four institute, one AICRP (Tuber Crops) and two externally funded research projects as PI and the technology is perfected and adopted by farmers.
2. Secondary and micronutrient-inclusive customised fertilizers for different nutrient management zones of cassava, sweet potato, elephant foot yam and yams in India. Forty on-farm experiments were conducted and validated.
3. Nutrient zonation maps were developed for fertilizer best management practice (FBMP) for cassava, sweet potato, elephant foot yam and yams using geoinformatics tools.
4. Nutrient decision support system for SSNM of cassava (CASSNUM) as an online tool has been developed and is hosted at ICAR-CTCRI website (http://ctcri.in) which gets more than 2000 hits a month. The decision support system helps cassava farmers to know all information about site specific nutrient management (SSNM) of cassava to determine the amount of fertilizers required for specific yield targets and to understand and rectify nutrient disorders of cassava. A newer version CASSNUM version 1.1 has been released in a CD.
5. Five liquid foliar micronutrient formulations for cassava (acid soils), cassava (alkali soils), sweet potato, elephant foot yam and yams were developed and commercialized.
6. Sree Poshini, a mobile app for site specific nutrient management of tropical tuber crops available at Google Playstore.
7. Real time N management technology using leaf colour chart (LCC) and SPAD-502 was developed for cassava.
8. Methodology developed for mapping the spatial variability of soil available nutrients at farm level using geostatistics to give field level nutrient recommendation and an online tool, Fertcalc_CTCRI has been developed and hosted at ICAR-CTCRI website (http://ctcri.in).  Complete information about the soil physical and chemical characteristics of the 130 locations of the ICAR_CTCRI farm have been generated and the data were used to generate kriged maps of the various parameters using geospatial analyst tool of ArcGIS 10.
9. Calibrated ECOCROP model of FAO for climate change studies of tropical tuber crops:  Calibrated ECOCROP model for cassava, sweet potato, elephant foot yam and yams under Indian conditions and developed methodology to study their suitability for current and future climate scenarios in India using geoinformatics tools.
10. Remote sensing technology has been developed to estimate cassava area using kernel based fuzzy classification approach. The study used temporal Landsat 8 data and was done in collaboration with Indian Institute of Remote Sensing (IIRS), Dehradun.
11. A very successful management practice to control tuber rot of cassava has been developed by conducting an on-farm experiment in Salem, Tamil Nadu.
12. A fertilizer recommendation of 125:75:125 kg ha-1 N, P2O5 and K2O was developed for the cassava mosaic resistant variety, Sree Padmanabha based on 3 years experiment.
13. Sustainable intercropping systems involving greater yam-maize, elephant foot yam based cropping systems (green gram and black gram), cassava (Sree Jaya and H-165) in coconut plantations and sweet potato (Samrat) in coconut plantations were developed.
14. Organic farming technology for the production of orange fleshed sweet potato was developed.
15. Sweet potato growth simulation model, Madhuram has been developed and validated.
16. Online tools, Variety identifier and Tuber information café were developed and were hosted at ICAR-CTCRI website (http://ctcri.org) which gets more than 2000 hits a month.
17. Two online decision support systems, NRPUP (Nutrient Recommendation for Potato Production in UP) and NRPPP (Nutrient Recommendation for Potato Production in Punjab) available at https://cpri.icar.gov.in.
18. FERTCALC, an online fertilizer calculator for site specific nutrient management of ICAR-CTCRI farm available at www.ctcri.in