Abstract
Abstract. The deficiency in post-harvest infrastructure leads to loss of agricultural produce which in turn affects farmer’s income and food security. So, there is a need to improve post-harvest infrastructure in the country. Potato is a major horticultural crop requiring cold storage facility. This study was carried out for Bihar state of India, which has the least ratio of storage capacity to potato production in comparison to other states. An approach has been developed to identify the suitable locations for cold storages using geospatial technology to increase accessibility to cold storage facilities. Temporal variations in vegetation profiles were used to generate crop maps and from this crop area proportions were calculated at village level. These proportions were used to identify significant village clusters contributing to horticulture production. From this priority villages were identified. These priority villages were assigned to nearest major settlement which will be the sites for positioning new cold storage facility. The approach developed in this study has identified 63 locations in 17 districts for developing new cold storage facility. The proposed new locations for cold storages will reduce the distance to nearest cold storage for 14244 villages and this reduction in distance will be more than 8 kms for 9774 villages. Thus, the study validated the role of Remote Sensing and GIS for post-harvest infrastructure planning.
Highlights
Over the years, horticulture has emerged as one of the potential agricultural enterprise in accelerating the growth of economy
In order to develop a database of the existing major horticultural crops and to promote holistic growth of the Horticultural sector, Department of Agriculture, Cooperation and Farmer’s Welfare of Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare has formulated a programme under the Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture (MIDH) initiated the project in September 2014, called Coordinated Horticulture Assessment & Management Using Geoinformatics” (CHAMAN) (Coordinated Horticulture Assessment and Management using geo-informatics), for better horticulture assessment and development through remote sensing, GIS and field data (Ray et al, 2016)
The objective of this study is to identify regions requiring cold storage infrastructure and positioning new cold storages using geospatial technology in order to increase the ease of access to cold storage infrastructure, thereby improving farmer’s income by increasing the shelf life of their produce
Summary
Horticulture has emerged as one of the potential agricultural enterprise in accelerating the growth of economy. Its role in the country's nutritional security, poverty alleviation and employment generation programmes is becoming increasingly important. It offers a wide range of options to the farmers for crop diversification, and provides ample scope for sustaining large number of agro industries which generate huge employment opportunities. In order to develop a database of the existing major horticultural crops and to promote holistic growth of the Horticultural sector, Department of Agriculture, Cooperation and Farmer’s Welfare of Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare has formulated a programme under the Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture (MIDH) initiated the project in September 2014, called CHAMAN (Coordinated Horticulture Assessment and Management using geo-informatics), for better horticulture assessment and development through remote sensing, GIS and field data (Ray et al, 2016). Detailed scientific field level studies for developing technology for crop identification, yield modelling and disease assessment
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