T
he Agricultural Meteorology Division of IMD is located at Pune.
It
maintains a network of agrometeorological
observatories across the country with the cooperation of agricultural
universities and research institutions. The
Division provides technical assistance to the cooperating
institutions for site selection, training of personnel,
calibration of instruments and their maintenance, scrutiny of
data, etc. Besides this, observations of evaporation,
evapotranspiration, soil moisture and dewfall are made at
IMD's own observatories. The Central Agrimet Observatory at Pune
and the agrimet observatories at Bangalore, Anand and Rahuri
have many specialised instruments and facilities for research.
The
Agricultural Meteorology Division prepares crop weather
calendars, which depict the state and stage of the crop under
normal weather conditions and the weather elements detrimental
to the crops in various growth stages. The crop weather
calendars are periodically revised as new crop varieties are
introduced and cropping patterns undergo changes.
Extensive
analysis of past rainfall data has been carried out by IMD to
help agricultural planning in drought-prone and dry land farming
areas of the country. An Agroclimatic Atlas of India has been
prepared. Aridity anomaly maps are compiled for the country on a
fortnightly basis. IMD also estimates the crop yields of
principal crops with the help of regression models which
parameterise the effects of various weather parameters during
the different growth stages of the crops.