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Hyderabad, India: To help farmers overcome the devastating effects of drought, harnessing modern tools is critical. At the InterDrought-V conference held in Hyderabad, India, this was the key message from Sri Krishna Byre Gowda, Minister of Agriculture, Government of Karnataka.

Every year, vast regions that impact food production affected by drought related disasters. The most immediate consequence is a drop in crop production due to inadequate and poorly distributed rainfall.

the Conference Organization Chair and Research Program Director, International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Rajeev Varshney said, “Given the severity of drought, a central challenge for researchers and policy makers is to devise technologies that lend greater resilience to agricultural production under this stress. Therefore 942 participants from 315 organizations from 56 countries assembled here to address this important issue.”

“A combined approach including crop improvement, agronomic practices and irrigation needs to be used for mitigating drought stress in developing countries,” said Dr Rob Bertram, Chief Scientist, Bureau of Food Security, United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in the inaugural address.

Director General, ICRISAT, Dr David Bergvinson said, “By using a holistic approach, organizations like ICRISAT need to work together and contribute to this important international food production constraint to feed the world. Prime Minister Modi has laid before us the challenge to double the income of farmers. It will be essential to enhance crop production and link farmers to markets.”

Sri S Pattanayak, Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Government of India said, “Farmers need to be placed at the centre of research and developing activities related to drought so that they can have more produce and better incomes.”

Deputy Director General-Crops Sciences, Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), Dr JS Sandhu said, “Drought research needs to be handled from different angles. We need breeding, physiology, biotechnology, agronomy to make the crops resilient.”

Dr Francois Tardieu, Research Director, INRA-Montpellier and Chair, InterDrought V, highlighted that this conference is in continuation of earlier InterDrought Conferences held in France (ID-I, 1995), Italy (ID-II, 2005), China (ID-III, 2009) and Australia (ID-IV, 2013), and invited all participants to the next conference in 2021.

From one year to the next, weather variability was identified as the critical risk to farming. This needs urgent solutions, and the conference served as an important call to action, he added.

The chief guest for the closing session, Sri Krishna Byre Gowda, Minister of Agriculture, Government of Karnataka, India, thanked ICRISAT for hosting the conference. He stressed that he is heartened by the community of scientists collaborating on one of the most important issues affecting farmers — with agriculture in India being dependent on the ‘wager of monsoons’.

He looked forward to technologies and solutions to be developed by scientists to tackle the problems faced by farmers due to greater variability.

A Climate Smart Agriculture workshop, held during the conference co-chaired by Dr David Bergvinson and Dr RS Paroda, former Director General ICAR has come up with a declaration on Climate Smart Agriculture. This will be circulated widely to donors and policy makers.

From 21-25 February, 2017, InterDrought-V conference was held in Hyderabad. The conference had 23 invited, 26 contributory presentations across 8 sessions. In addition, 55 presentations were delivered in 8 workshops. During the event, young scientists from developing countries interacted with eminent scientists and policy-makers.