English: Research Achievement: Development of innovative approaches to enable small-holder farmers of South Asia to achieve gains in productivity and profitability through use of cutting edge Information & Communication Technologies to guide application of site-specific nutrient and crop management options
Outline of Research Achievements
In South Asia, traditional blanket recommendations for soil fertility management do not consider the huge variability among fields of smallholder farmers in terms of soil type, farm management, and other aspects. Future gains in productivity and input use efficiency will therefore require soil and crop management technologies that are more knowledge-intensive and tailored to the specific characteristics of individual farms and fields. Sheetal Sharma and her team worked to translate and transfer the science of site-specific nutrient management and tools developed at IRRI HQ to developing countries through innovative approaches to reap the benefits at a large scale. She played a central role in conceptualizing and designing the Crop Manager for India, an ICT tool that provides nutrient recommendations to farmers. She also collected the desired data through strategic and adapted research, and the tools were further developed and evaluated by establishing strategic partnerships.
These concentrated efforts resulted in the development of two versions of Crop Manager for India. Documented evidence demonstrates that Crop Manager for Odisha improved rice productivity by 0.5-0.8 t/ha and increased net added benefit by USD104-155/ha per season over farmers' practice. Likewise, Crop Manager for Bihar improved rice and wheat yield by 0.7 and 0.3 t/ha, respectively, and resulted to a net added benefit of USD 147/ha per season in rice and USD 63/ha per season in wheat over farmers’ practice. Crop Manager for India is the result of a joint effort between IRRI and national partners under the National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture by the Department of Agriculture, Cooperation & Farmers Welfare, Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare. Forging partnerships and enhancing the capacity of various stakeholders have provided more than 30,000 farmers with Crop Manager recommendations. Furthermore, Sharma and her team aim to bring the benefits of Crop Manager to about 1 million small-scale farmers by the end of 2020.