START Programme

Why in news?

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is conducting the Space science and Technology Awareness Training (START) 2024 programme.

About

• Objective: To attract the youngsters to the fields of space science and technology.
• Feature: The training modules will comprise introductory level topics on various verticals of space science and technology.
• There will be sessions on Indian space exploration programmes and research opportunities.
• Eligibility: Post-graduate students and final year undergraduate students of physical sciences and technology studying in educational institutes, universities and colleges within India are eligible to be considered for the training.

Krishi Integrated Command and Control Centre (ICCC)

Why in news?

• Recently, the Union Agriculture Minister inaugurated a Krishi Integrated Command and Control Centre (ICCC) at Krishi Bhavan in New Delhi.

About the ICCC

• It is a significant technological advancement in the field of agriculture in India involving multiple IT applications and platforms. It is designed to help in making informed decisions.
• It uses state-of-the-art technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Remote Sensing, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to collect and process large amounts of granular data — on temperatures, rainfall, wind speed, crop yields and production estimations — and presents it in graphical format.

Objective of the ICCC

It aims to enable comprehensive monitoring of the farm sector by making available at one place geospatial information received from multiple sources, including:

• Remote sensing;
• Plot-level data received through soil survey;
• Weather data from the India Meteorological Department (IMD);
• Sowing data from Digital Crop Survey;
• Farmer and farm related data from Krishi MApper (an application for geo-fencing and geo-tagging of land);
• Market intelligence information from the Unified Portal for Agricultural Statistics (UPAg); and
• Yield estimation data from the General Crop Estimation Survey (GCES).

Significances

• There is visual information on crop yields, production, drought situation, cropping patterns (geographic region-wise and year-wise) in map, timeline, and drill-down views.
• The relevant trends (periodic and non-periodic), outliers, and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and receive insights, alerts, and feedback on agriculture schemes, programmes, projects, and initiatives.