IPNI Research Cooperators' Meet 2016

The 4th IPNI Research Cooperators Meet was organized at Visva Bharati University Sriniketan, West Bengal, incollaboration with Visva Bharati University. The program begins on April 8th with the inaugural session. Prof. Swapan Datta, Honorable Vice Chancellor, Visva Bharati was the chief guest of the inaugural session while Dr. Adrian Johnston, Vice President, IPNI presided over the session. Dr. Kaushik Majumdar, Director, IPNI delivered his context setting lecture while Prof. Sarthak Chowdhury, Principal, College of Agriculture delivered his welcome address. Dr. A. K. Singh, Honorable Vice Chancellor, Bihar Agricultural University, Sabour was also present in the inaugural program as the guest of honor. Dr. Sudarshan Dutta, Deputy Director, IPNI gave the formal vote of thanks. After the inaugural session the scientific discussion started and continued till April 9, evening.

IPNI Research Cooperators' Meet is a biannual event conducted by IPNI South Asia Program where the IPNI research cooperators make presentations of their ongoing research projects. Scientists of ICAR, Member company agronomists, and university scientists participated in this very important event on invitation basis. There were four special lectures and six technical sessions in this event and all the sessions were scientifically extremely insightful. At the end there was concluding session that summarized the key messages of the cooperators' meet.

The plenary session highlighted the fact that balanced fertilization through the implementation of the concept of 4R Nutrient Stewardship is the key to success of sustainable agriculture. However, implementing balanced fertilization in smallholder farming system is a challenge. Nutrient Expert based recommendation helps in providing balanced fertilizer recommendation for crops like rice, maize. The NE tool has proved its excellent performance in the research stations as well as in the farmers field. The next challenge is dissemination of the tool. More over, there is a constant demand for development of NE for other crops such as Soybean, Cotton , potato, and Sugarcane. Other options of balanced nutrient recommendation also needs to be focused by exploring different aspects. Overall, there was a consensus that IPNI south Asia Program is leading some great initiatives towards implementation of 4R Nutrient Stewardship.