Context: Recently, the Union Minister of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare launched the Krishi Megh (National Agricultural Research & Education System -Cloud Infrastructure and Services). 

• The Minister also launched the KVC ALUNET (Krishi Vishwavidyalaya Chhatr Alumni Network) and Online Accreditation System for Higher Agricultural Educational Institutions (HEI).

About Krishi Megh (National Agricultural Research & Education System – Cloud Infrastructure and Services)

• Krishi Megh is the data recovery centre of ICAR (Indian Council of Agricultural Research).
• The data recovery centre has been set up at National Academy of Agricultural Research Management (NAARM), Hyderabad.
• Krishi Megh has been set up under the National Agricultural Higher Education Project (NAHEP), funded by both the government and the World Bank.
• The data recovery centre at NAARM is synchronised with the data centre at IASRI.
• IASRI – ICAR-Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute (IASRI) is an institute located in New Delhi engaged in teaching and training in Agricultural Statistics, Computer Application and Bioinformatics.

Benefits of Krishi Megh

• It has been built to mitigate the risk, enhance the quality, availability and accessibility of e-governance, research, extension and education in the field of agriculture in India.
• Krishi Megh is said to be a step forward towards digital agriculture of the ‘New India’.
• Krishi Megh is equipped with the latest artificial intelligence and deep learning software for building and deploying of deep learning-based applications through image analysis, disease identification in livestock, etc.
• It enables the farmers, researchers, students and policymakers to be more equipped with the updated and latest information regarding agriculture and research.

About KVC ALUNET

• Its development has been a result of an idea of social networking for the alumnus of the Agricultural Universities. 
• It will enable the alumni of all the 74 Agricultural Universities in connecting with each other and making it possible to assist the students in internship, placements and to provide support to their alma maters.

About Cloud Storage

• It is a cloud computing model that stores data on the Internet through a cloud computing provider who manages and operates data storage as a service.
• It is delivered on demand with just-in-time capacity and costs, and eliminates buying and managing your own data storage infrastructure.
• It gives agility, global scale and durability, with “anytime, anywhere” data access.

Additional Information

• NAHEP: It is a Government of India-World Bank funded project that aims to attract talent and strengthen higher agricultural education in the country by supporting agricultural universities and ICAR in providing more relevant and quality education to Agricultural University students.
• ICAR: It is an autonomous organisation under the Department of Agricultural Research and Education (DARE), Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare.Union Minister of Agriculture serves as its president.