Aligarh : Prof Segundo E V Medrano, National University of Jaen, Peru discussed the vital role of crop modelling and forecasting in food safety, security and management.

He was delivering the keynote address in the seven-day Global Initiative of Academic Networks (GIAN) course on ‘Remote Sensing (RS) Based Resources and their Application in Crop Monitoring and Crop Modelling’ at the Department of Economics, Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). The programme will conclude on November 22.

He stressed the importance of Remote Sensing and GIS for the society and economy and talked about its increasing role in agricultural practices.

“India can have better productivity of crops and level of output by using the inputs received from remote sensing and GIS”, remarked Prof Segundo.

In the presidential address, Prof Mirza Asmer Beg (Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences) said: “Timely and accurate crop yielding forecasting and prediction is increasingly becoming important both in developed and developing countries. It helps to know in advance what the yield of a crop will be at the end of the growing season”.

In the welcome address, Prof Md Abdus Salam (Chairman, Department of Economics) extended gratitude to the keynote speaker and shed light on how crop growth modeling was initiated and developed and how research attention is now shifting to operational application possibilities.

Prof M J Warsi (GIAN, Local Coordinator) informed that 18 GIAN courses have been approved to take place at AMU under Phase III and 12 more proposals are under review.

Dr Dastgir Alam (Course Coordinator) extended the vote of thanks.