20 Agri Dept officers receive training to assess crop damage thru drone technology

Around 20 officers of the Department of Agricultural Extension are currently undergoing training on utilising drone technology to assess crop damage resulting from severe weather conditions or diseases.

The 7-day training, jointly designed by the agricultural department and Asian Development Bank, was launched at a workshop titled "The Use of Drone and Satellite Image for Crop Monitoring and Crop Damage Assessment" on Wednesday at the Hotel InterContinental in Dhaka.

Malay Choudhury, additional secretary of the Ministry of agriculture, and Edimon Ginting, country director for the Asian Development Bank, jointly inaugurated the workshop.

Japan Fund for Prosperous and Resilient Asia and the Pacific, financed by the Japan government, provided the fund for the training programme. Renowned geospatial experts from the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics will conduct the training, according to an ADB press release.

The trainees will receive 4 days of classroom training on geographical information systems and remote sensing analysis for crop damage detection and participate in a 3-day field trip to Sylhet to learn ground data collection using mobile devices. In 2022, a series of floods caused major crop damage in Sylhet.

At the workshop, Asian Development Bank Country Director Edimon Ginting said proper assessment of crop diseases and losses are critical in initiating appropriate measures to ensure agricultural productivity and food security in the context of growing threats of climate change in Bangladesh.

"ADB will continue to bring in innovative solutions including advanced technologies to help Bangladesh tackle climate impacts," he added.

Badal Chandra Biswas, director general of the Department of Agricultural Extension, said with advanced geospatial technology, agriculture officers will be able to assess crop damage and initiate effective government programmes to mitigate the expected damage caused by climate change in the future.

Following the training programme, there are plans to produce joint reports on crop damage assessment in the Sylhet region, conduct a project evaluation study of an ADB-supported integrated water management project in Gopalganj, and implement a nationwide climate disaster assessment in a small local government unit, says the media release.