PUNE: It can be said that agriculture and information technology are the two traditional and modern pillars of Indian economy. While IT has progressed in leaps and bounds in the past few years, there has been deterioration in agriculture. If these two are combined in a judicious way, surely sustainable development will not be far away.

In all, 610 school students recently participated in various scientific games and displayed projects on the theme of Agro Automation under the punchline Let’s feed the world at the 5^thNational Junior Robocon organized in MIT Vishwashanti Gurukul School in Wakhari in Pandharpur.

Supply chain, smart farming

A total of 610 students from 60 schools from Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Aurangabad, Chichondi (Nagar), Kolhapur, Solapur, Nanded, Barshi, Parbhani, Baramati, Akluj, Ambejogai, Akkalkot, Akola and Loni participated in this unique competition organized for 2 days – 11 and 12^th January 2018.

This included students from Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, studying in these schools. The objectives of the competition were to develop a liking for technology among students; to nurture qualities like experimentation, leadership, team spirit and creativity and to create awareness about the agricultural problems faced by the country. The theme has been inspired by the Scheme for Agro-Marine Processing (Sampada) launched by the Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi. The competition was held under 4 categories; viz. supply chain system, smart farming, satellite technology and agro innovation.

In the first 3 categories, the students tried to complete the assigned activities in the scientific games in minimum time. This included the automation involved from farm to plate, role of robots at different stages in agriculture and the progress achieved in satellite research in India, respectively. In the 4^th category, students displayed models and gave demonstrations on topics like aquaponics, segregation machine, aqua robot, Kisan bot, urban agriculture, green house, mechanized poultry, seed box, smart farming, mobile bot, cattle health monitoring and soil nutrient tester. New ideas on value addition in farm produce can be developed and savings in terms of water, electricity, time and manpower can be achieved through this.