A two member team from the Royal Norwegian Embassy, New Delhi comprising of Mr.Ole Reidar Bergum, First Secretary, and Mr.L.Vijayanathan, Senior Advisor, visited the ClimaRice 1 and 2 project sites in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh from the 15-18 August.
During the visit, the team interacted with project partners; Bioforsk, Tamilnadu Agricultural University (TNAU), International Water Management Institute (IWMI), farmers, officials from different government agencies and women self help groups in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. The project coordinator Udaya Sekhar Nagothu and Ragnar Pedersen from Bioforsk accompanied the team in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
In Andhra Pradesh, the team interacted with farmers in two pilot villages in the Krishna Delta region falling in Guntur district, besides meeting local and regional officials from the Agricultural Research Stations, Department of Agriculture, Department of Irrigation (CADA). Climarice 2 project, through IWMI, Hyderabad office, is currently taking up field validation on selected farmers fields to test the performance of certain rice production systems, measuring Water Use Efficiency of various irrigation systems currently in practise, micro-nutirent and bio-fertilizers use in rice production. Dr.Krishna Reddy and Dr.Kiran from IWMI accompanied the team and presented the project activities in the field.
In Tamil Nadu, Dr.Geetha Lakshmi and Dr.Lakshman presented the overall progress of the Climarice 1 and 2 projects and the achievements so far. The Climarice 1 project is currently being reviewed by an external team of experts. The embassy team also participated in farmers meetings and had an opportunity to visit the project area and interact with farmers in Bhavani basin, Tamil Nadu.
For further details on the Climarice project: www.climarice.com