International Training Programme on 'Use of Poor-Quality Waters in Agriculture' organised at CSSRI Karnal

KARNAL: A 10-days African-Asian Rural Development Organization (AARDO) sponsored International Training on “Use of Poor-Quality Waters in Agriculture” was organized at ICAR-Central Soil Salinity Research Institute (CSSRI), Karnal.

It was attended by nine delegates from seven AARDO member countries namely, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Kenya, Zambia, Jordan and Eswatini having the problems of poor-quality ground water and salt affected soils.

Manoj Nardeosingh, Secretary General, AARDO was the Chief Guest, and S. K. Chaudhari, Deputy Director General, Natural Resource Management, Indian Council of Agricultural Research was the Guest of Honour for the valedictory function.

Manoj Nardeosingh briefed that AARDO is a group of 32 countries of Africa (18 nos.) and Asia (14 nos.). He emphasized that AARDO is mainly working in the field of rural development for its member countries through various capacity building programmes.

He emphasized that most of the AARDO countries are having the problems of salinity and poor-quality water therefore a group of people were selected for the training in CSSRI.

Nardeosingh said that there is a need to mitigate hunger and poverty and produce more basic and nutrient rich food to mitigate the hunger and poverty in AARDO countries.

He emphasized,” There is a need to produce 60% more food grain by 2050 and for which underutilized salt-affected soils and poor-quality water resources need to be utilized. I also emphasized the concern for the economic inflation, climate change challenges, poverty, equality in the AARDO countries. “

S. K. Choudhary expressed his views on poor quality waters and its proper utilization for agricultural crop production. He said that beyond saline and sodic water, poor quality water includes the industrial and sewage waste waters, and specific ion toxicity leading to arsenic and boron.

He said that good quality water is required for every economic activity and its availability for agriculture is reducing over the period due to over exploitation and competition with other sectors. He said that the volume of poor-quality water is increasing due to geological as well as anthropogenic activities and it's really difficult to manage the anthropogenic poor-quality waters which is beyond control.

R. K. Yadav Director, ICAR-CSSRI, Karnal, briefly presented the importance of exchange of scientific knowledge and socio-cultural exchange between the AARDO member countries through such types of training programmes.

AK Rai, Course Co-Director & Head Soil Crop Management, ICAR-CSSRI Karnal, briefed that CSSRI Trying very hard to meet the expectation of the AARDO members countries to train the resource persons from various countries for effective utilization of poor quality and use in agriculture and for the effective management of salt-affected soils.

Gajender, Course Director & Senior Scientist, ICAR-CSSRI, Karnal, briefed that the course curriculum was set to keeping the issues and challenges of aridity, salinity, sodicity and poor-quality waters in various Agro Ecological Regions of the AARDO members countries as CSSRI is having expertise in these areas and aims to capacity building of researchers and agricultural development officers of different countries