“Reactive nitrogen compounds like NOx, ammonia and the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide impact air, water and soil quality, health, biodiversity and climate change, among others. These compounds are lost from fertilizers, manures and sewage as well as from fuel burning in transport and industry. Assessing and managing them sustainably will be crucial to achieve the 17 UN SDGs targeted for 2030”, said Nandula Raghuram, Chair of the INI and Professor of biotechnology from Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, New Delhi. “INI conferences always brought together the latest science to call for governmental action and evidence-based policies. Our earlier conference declarations and nitrogen assessment projects led to the first ever UN resolution on sustainable nitrogen management piloted by Indian government in 2019”, he added.

The increasing inter-governmental attention to reactive nitrogen is evident from the programme posted on the conference website (ini2021.com). Apart from scientists and German government, the conference will be addressed by speakers from UN Environment Programme (UNEP), UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and UN Economic Commission on Europe (UNECE), among others. The website also carries a draft of the “Berlin Declaration” for comments, which will be finalized and adopted during the concluding session of the conference on 3rd June. Nitrous oxide has upto 300 times higher global warming potential than carbon dioxide and the UK government is highlighting it in the run up to the UNFCC COP26 to be held at Glasgow in November this year.

Prof. Tapan Adhya, Director of the INI South Asia Nitrogen Centre said “South Asia is one of the global hotspots for nitrogen pollution. The Indian nitrogen assessment of 2017 has provided a huge impetus to the UN resolution, as well as to the ongoing South Asian nitrogen assessment. Millions of lives and livelihoods are affected by nitrogen pollution, apart from loss of fertilizers worth billions of dollars from farms”.

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Keywords: UNEP, Nitrogen Management, Nitrogen Pollution, Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs, Conference of the International Nitrogen Initiative, INI, Umweltbundesamt – UBA, Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety, Food and Agriculture Organisation, FAO, UNECE, MoEFCC, Ministry of Agriculture, ICAR

The AIM-ICDK Water innovation challenge was placed to identify promising innovators from India, who could represent and form the Indian participation in the global Next Generation Water Action program hosted by International Water Association and Denmark Technical University. The challenge saw innovation submission from 400+ applicants and eventually identified a total of 10 Indian teams including 6 Student teams and 4 startup teams from across the country.

The selected teams formed the Indian participation for the ‘Next Generation Water Action’- an initiative anchored by DTU to engage young talents from leading universities and innovation hub of 5 countries (India, Denmark, Kenya, Ghana and South Korea) to build their skills and apply their technical disciplines, innovation capacity and solutions to challenge and catalyse water solutions towards smart livable cities.

As part of the India challenge, student and startup teams were invited to present their ideas in following challenge areas: Digital water management solutions, Solutions for monitoring and prevention of leakage in city water supply, Waste water management across rural belts and urban settlements, Rainwater harvesting in rural and urban settlements, and Safe and sustained drinking water.

India in addition to sending participation to the challenge was also a challenge partner host. AIM was the challenge-host for India, Ghana water company for Ghana, Ramboll Foundation for Brazil, Grundfos Foundation for Denmark and Daegu Metropolitan for South Korea. The selected teams across the participating nations worked with each of the challenge partners.

India, as a challenge partner, hosted three Indian student teams and one team each from Denmark and South Korea, these teams worked on solving India specific challenges; additionally, one Indian team participated in Ghana, Denmark and Brazil specific challenges.

The global program saw participation of 11 startup teams, 4 from India, 3 from Denmark, 2 from Kenya and 2 from Ghana. The startup teams competed at International level for the Innovation awards at Next Generation Water Action finals. The four startup teams from India include Agromorph, Digital Eco-Innovision, Troncart Solutions and Mecentro. AIM onboarded academic partners – IIT Delhi, IIT Bombay and International Center for Clear Water at IIT Madras and Incubator partners – AIC- Sangam and AIC FISE to guide the teams. Teams working on India problems were provided mentorship support by a carefully curated and illustrious panel of water experts. Additional support was provided by the Next Generation Water Action team in form of virtual knowledge, mentorship and networking sessions.

The teams submitted their final innovation submission on 30th April 2021, after a three-month long development phase from February-April 2021. The student after which teams took part in the global semi-finals on 12th May 2021, hosted by their respective challenge host countries. Of the 6 Indian student teams that presented in the semifinals, 4 were shortlisted to pitch their solution in the finals.

While the startup teams pitched directly in the Global finals, an event hosted by DTU on 18th May 2021.
The final event was held physically in Denmark Technical University with participation virtually from local hubs in 5 participating nations. India hosted its final all virtually and as part of as part of the final event, a panel discussion was hosted by Mission Director, Atal Innovation Mission Dr Chintan Vaishnav.

Speaking during the final event Dr Chintan said, “I commend all of the innovators for working on water related issues, as both technology and business model innovations in this sector require much creativity and grit. I also thank the Innovation Center Denmark for hosting this worthy challenge.”

The panelist presented their perspectives on future of water technology innovations in India. The panel discussion was followed by the global final event, which saw participation of all the participating countries, partners and innovators. Dr Chintan Vaishnav addressed the gathering as keynote speaker and announced the winners of the Indian challenge.

The following India teams were announced winners in the Final event of the Next Generation Water Action:

Student teams:
1. Acceleration award: Vaishali and Kowshalya  for their solution Sustainable Management by Affordable Recovery Technologies (SMART).
2. Most promising solution: Mihir Palav and Ektavyam team for their solution – technology enabled multi stakeholder platform for water governance.
3. International World Water Congress 2022 Scholarships: Mihir Palav and Ektavyam team for their solution – technology enabled multi stakeholder platform for water governance.

Startup teams:
1. Top 5 startups: Two Indian startups Agromorph led by Akansha Agarwal and Digital Eco innovision led by Mansi Jain were selected among top 5 startups.
2. International World Water Congress 2022 Scholarships: Agromorph led by Akansha Agarwal

The partnership between two Innovation bodies – Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog from India and Innovation Centre Denmark – is aligned with the goals of the larger the Green Strategic Partnership between India and Denmark, a Statement of Intent (SoI) was signed between both bodies on 12th April 2021. AIM and ICDK shall continue to work together for the greater good in the area of environment and sustainability.

Spatial variations in soil type and mineral content in large agricultural tracts are a common phenomenon that leads to a dynamic need for resources such as fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and even water. Farmers have been collecting information on these variations through soil test by local bodies or installing sensors to collect the data in real-time. However, the proximity of the applicator vehicle to the sensor hinders real-time sensor-based data processing and fertilizer application.

The novel technology, developed by researchers at IIT, Kharagpur, is aimed towards efficient use of Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Potash (NPK) for automated soil nutrition management by bypassing both manual labour based operations or sensor-based fertilization technologies which are still under development, say researchers.

Prof. VK Tewari, Director, IIT Kharagpur along with his former research scholar Dr. Sneha Jha from the Dept. of Agricultural and Food Engineering, explored an alternate method of creating a soil nutrition map that can be accessed in real-time through differential global positioning system for variable rate application of NPK.  The soil map can be replicated for agricultural plots based on soil tests which can be performed at district administration levels or by private labs. This data when fed into the DGPS module will be accessible to farms using the GUI installed-applicator.

Explaining the process Prof. Tewari said, “We divided one hectare of land into 36 grids with the nutritional requirement of each grid fed in the soil map. The fertilizer applicator vehicle, fitted with a DGPS module and GUI enabled Microprocessor cum Microcontroller, can access this map and compute in real-time the variable rates in the fertilizer application function.” He further added remarking on how this technology can bring down the cost of fertilizer application by improving the efficiency of the job and reducing manual labour.

“The system can detect the field grids in real-time with a length-wise accuracy of 16 cm towards the east and breadth-wise accuracy of 20 cm towards the north. It can manage the automated application from 5 to 400 Kg per hectare. Application of such desired amount of NPK precisely at a specific location will enhance crop production and avoid environmental degradation. This technology would be able to reduce 30% of fertilizers used in manual methods thus ensuring substantial savings in resource applications,” said Prof. Tewari. (India Science Wire)

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Keywords: Geospatial, Mapping, Food security, Soil maps, DGPS, IIT Kharagpur, fertilizer application, farmland, Agriculture

Phytoplankton is an indicator of primary marine productivity and an important component of the seafood web on which regional fisheries depend. This phytoplankton biomass significantly alters the food web and ocean’s ability to absorb atmospheric carbon. Scientists at the National Center for Coastal Research (NCCR) have explored how changes in primary producers of phytoplankton are affecting the secondary producers of phytoplankton biomass in the complex coastal ecosystem of the Northern Hemisphere between the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal in the eastern part of the country. According to NCCR scientists, the baseline observations noted through the present study will help to understand the trend and type of food web operating along the Indian coastline and accordingly the role of food preference of zooplankton on fishery yield could be understood.

In addition to the monsoonal runoff and regional processes, the phytoplankton biomass along the Indian coast may be influenced by anthropogenic inputs through river discharge. Nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorous and silicate play a key role in phytoplankton abundance, growth and metabolism. However, higher concentrations of nitrate were found in the East coast of India (ECI) than in the West coast of India (WCI). Despite higher nutrients are found along the ECI due to discharge of major rivers,  threefold higher phytoplankton biomass has been observed along the WCI than the ECI due to high suspended solid concentrations (SSC), brought by rivers to the ECI that inhibits light penetration into water column leading to low phytoplankton biomass. On the other hand, rivers also bring terrestrial organic matter along with SSC to the coastal region that may be supporting zooplankton carbon needs in the ECI.

The authors of the present study said that phytoplankton biomass growth is minimum along the ECI due to higher load of SSC and removal of nitrate is also minimum. However, zooplankton population was supported more by phytoplankton biomass along the WCI whereas terrestrial organic matter brought by river in the ECI. Researchers believe that due to the ongoing climate change, world fisheries are economically suffering a lot. As per recent records on fisheries, the southwest coast provides 31% of the fishery yields and 26% are from the southeast coast. The modification of river discharge (mainly reduction) may reduce terrestrial organic matter inputs to the coastal regions that may lead to a significant decline in zooplankton biomass and therefore fisheries population. An estimate suggests that global warming could cut the value of world fishery catches from 41 billion dollars a year to about 17 billion dollars a year by 2050 with East Asia and the Pacific suffering the greatest losses.

Led by Manuri D. B., the research team comprised of Chandrasekaran M., Perumal M., and Mallavarapu R.M of NCCR, NIOT Campus, Chennai, Ministry of Earth Sciences. The study is published in Environmental Science and Pollution Research.

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Keywords: Phytoplankton, Biomass, Marine food, Coastal India, MoES

This application provides the Hyperspectral information in point data over the Goa state, view the information in the graphical format reflection agents the wavelength, and there are three different spectral ranges are as

1.VNIR (0-2500nm) visible and near-infrared,

2.FTIR (2501-15000nm) Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy,

3.Entire Spectra (0-15000nm).

The Hyperspectral signatures graph is found for the particular point information and it also it has the feature of matching wavelength, means it finds the nearest matching wavelength and also provides the matching percentage for the algorithm use for matching wavelength is creating buffer of every point the wavelength matching under particular buffer are saved, this will happen for every buffer point. At the end check highest number of matching wavelength is considered as nearest match.

The HySIS has information such as: Administrative layers (State Boundary, District Boundary, Taluka Boundary, Panchayat Boundary and Cadastral Boundary) thereby reaching out to the farmers in a more realistic manner. The App provides the easy to reach location in hierarchical pattern like State, District, Taluka, Panchayat and Cadastral. The point data provides the attribute information of soil and site characteristics and fertility information. The legend information is also available. The App can locate the user’s location on hierarchical drop down selection basis or else the GPS enabled location tracking. The real time GPS based tracking allows the user to collect information while on the go.

This App will benefit the Goan farmers, planners and executors. The App will be updated at regular intervals based on the technological developments as well as user’s feedback.