Webinar on tech to conserve water, crop diversification

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Jalandhar, May 11

On the occasion of National Technology Day on Wednesday, the field outreach bureau (FOB) of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting organised a webinar about various techniques to conserve water as well as crop diversification.

The focus of the webinar was on the use of ‘Irrigation alert device’ that helps in conserving water during farming and has been developed by the Indian Institute of Technology, Ropar.

Dr Pushpendra Singh, Project Head of Agriculture & Water Technology Development Hub (AWaDH) said that the ‘Irrigation Alert Device’ is a system that detects humidity in the farm, analyses it as per crop requirement and releases an advisory to the farmer so that he can start the irrigation. “The device would help in saving water as the farmer does not have to keep the water flowing as is normally seen during paddy sowing”, he said.

Dr Pushpendra said the institute has also developed a NanoBubble Generator to decontaminate the pollutants in the water to make it potable.

Earlier, Vivek Vaibhav, Director, Regional Outreach Bureau (ROB), Chandigarh, of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, in his address, explained the importance of National Technology Day which is being celebrated since May 11, 1998, when India successfully tested Nuclear weapons in Pokhran.

Field Publicity Officer of FOB, Jalandhar, Rajesh Bali, who organised and moderated the webinar said, “All of us need to evolve a system to clean and conserve water at our level also for future generations so that they also get drinkable water”. He said as per reports the water table has gone down at various places in Punjab and we all can do our bit to increase the level by using various technologies developed by IIT, Ropar and other such institutions.

Sapna, Deputy Director, ROB, Chandigarh, presented a vote of thanks while lauding the audience, especially young students from some engineering institutes and NCC cadets from Jalandhar Directorate, who vowed to make people aware in saving natural resources. She also applauded a young progressive farmer from Jalandhar, Karanbir Sandhu, MTech in Electrical Engineering, working on diversification in agriculture and crop residue management.