Context: Recently, Union Minister of State for Agriculture launched Krishi-Decision Support System (Krishi-DSS) a geo-spatial platform to provide real-time information on crop conditions, weather patterns, water resources, and soil health.

• It has been developed by Union Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare and Department of Space using RISAT-1A and Visualization of Earth observation Data and Archival System (VEDAS) of the space department. 

About Krishi-Decision Support System

• It is a first-of-its-kind geospatial platform specifically designed for Indian agriculture.

Features

• It captures minute details from the vast expanse of fields to the smallest soil particle.

• The platform provides seamless access to comprehensive data including satellite images, weather information, reservoir storage, groundwater levels and soil health information, which can be easily accessed from anywhere at any time.

• It’ll also give near real-time information on various indicators such as soil moisture, water storage, crop condition, dry spells, etc.

• One nation-one soil information system of Krishi-DSS will give comprehensive soil data with embedded information on soil type, soil pH (potential of hydrogen), soil health, etc.

Significance

• It will enable the government to understand cropping patterns by analysing parcel-level crop maps of different years.

• The feature on drought monitoring in this platform will help the government to stay ahead of drought.

• It will enable the government to accurately identify field-parcel units, which will help in understanding each parcel's unique needs, and cropping patterns, for targeted interventions.

• Soil data will help the government in assessing crop suitability and land capability for implementing soil-water conservation measures, officials said.

• That apart, the ground-truth data library of Krishi-DSS will help in fostering innovation by providing essential resources for different crops to researchers and the industry.

• By integrating data sources available on Krishi-DSS, various farmer-centric solutions — such as right individual advisories to farmers, early disaster warnings like pest attacks, heavy rain, hailstorms, etc. — can be developed.

• It is developed jointly by the Ministry of Agriculture and the Department of Space.

Initiatives undertaken 

• Forecasting Agricultural Output using Space, Agro-meteorology and Land based Observations (FASAL) Project  

• Coordinated programme on Horticulture Assessment and Management using geoiNformatics (CHAMAN) Project

• KISAN (Crop Insurance using Space technology And geoiNformatics) for improvement in yield estimation.