Celebration of World Soil Day 2021
A “world soil day” programme was organized at ICAR-NIASM in collaboration with Agriculture Development Trust, Baramati, Bayer Crop Science Ltd. India and International Institute of Carbon Action and Renewed Earth (IICARE) ensuring more than 150 participants including agricultural scientist, farmers and students’ stakeholders on 4-Dec, 2021. The chief guests were Dr. Suhas Joshi, Head, CSR- South East Asia, Bayer Crop Science Ltd. India; Dr. Santosh Bhosale, Mr. Rajendra Sharma and Mr. Vedant Ahluwalia, advisors of International Institute of Carbon Action and Renewed Earth, and Chandrashekhar Bhadsawale, Progressive farmer in Maharashtra. Dr. Himanshu Pathak, Director ICAR –NIASM emphasised need of maintaining soil health in relation to ecosystem service, animal and plant health. He, further, insisted on theme of the world soil day celebration “Halt soil salinization and improve crop productivity. There were also five rice progressive farmers; Mr. Shirke Jalinder, Jayavant Khopde, Kirna Yadav and Amit Gadre shared their experience on how to maintain soil health for achieving sustainable higher crop yield. In afternoon session of the day, farmers were taken to ICAR-NAISM orchard, which have been established on partially weathered degraded land, and demonstrated soil sampling techniques be adapted for assessment of soil health and fertilizer recommendation to field crops and fruit crops.