Greetings to all members of ISAE

As a youthful country with a median age of 29 years, India is emerging as a significant global innovation and startup hub. Providing impetus to startups based on agricultural engineering technology can address many issues such as employment generation, value addition, increase income to farmers, and promoting vibrant agrarian value chains. Agricultural Engineering interventions are necessary for India’s next green revolution. Many agricultural technology startups in India focusing on technologies such as protected cultivation, post- harvest management, value addition, cold chain management, data analytics, machine learning, and satellite imaging are already enabling farmers to maximize their output. To cope up with challenges site-specific adaptive practices and techniques need to be adapted to local conditions. There is need to find solutions to challenges posed by changing climate and variability in the agricultural production system which are crucial to meet sustainable development goals.

Indian Society of Agricultural Engineers have been continuously making efforts to make significant presence at International level.  International community have joined hands with Indian Society of Agricultural Engineers and a strong partnership with global agricultural engineering fraternity has been initiated. ISAE has been actively engaged in this endeavour. Global food security meet was organised in 2015 in South Africa followed by Global water security meet in India in 2018. The recent international meet on precision agriculture i.e '8th Asian-Australasian Conference on Precision Agriculture” hosted by Indian society of Agricultural  Engineers jointly with PAU Ludhiana, with a support of ICAR, was a great success. 

To give boost to international cooperation, on behalf of ISAE, I visited USA, Nigeria, South Korea and Nepal on the invitation of respective professional societies. The efforts of ISAE for developing strong international network among agricultural engineering professionals were recognized and appreciated by all these professional societies. MOUs were signed with these professional societies for working jointly for mutual benifit and overall growth of the profession. In Pune convention delegation-level participation was there from these respective international professional societies for further strengthening cooperation and developing professional network.

To complement each other in different skills and core capabilities, there is need of strong collaboration between agricultural engineering researchers and industry. From the last couple of  years ISAE has been making concrete efforts in this direction. The industry session was a special attraction of Kashi convention (BHU) followed by Pune Convention (Rahuri). During both the conventions, senior executives of major tractor companies, agro-industries and agro-based start-ups of the country participated in signifcnat Industry representatives presented their future plan to enhance engineering interventions in agriculture for making agriculture a respectable, profitable and enjoyable enterprise. 

In order to use lockdown as an opportunity for capacity building of young engineers and to have dialogue on issues of national agriculture for better input, ISAE started webinar series. The Webinar series 1.0 on ‘Automation in Agriculture’ was organized from 20-29^th April, 2020. More than 700 + Participants registered, over 2500 Facebook live views and 800 + panelists and participants attending this event through zoom.  The speakers were from world prestigious institutes like Washington State university, Mississippi State University,  Asian Institute of Technology (AIT Bangkok), IIT Kharagpur, IIT Bombay, Indian  Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), ISRO, BISA-Ludhiana, Punjab Agricultural University, Central Institute of Agril Engineering (CIAE-Bhopal) and Few Progressive Indian Farmers. Also, the  webinars covered skills development topics for Students and Professionals  like Electronics, Embedded controllers, Sensors, Signal conditioning, Controls, Connectivity, Networking, Programming, Remote data management with emphasis on agricultural use cases.

In continuation, ISAE started Webinar 2.0 series in May 2020 with the objective of networking the Industry and Management professionals with the educational and research Institutes for enabling skill development and collaboration. Technical Application Group (TAG) came into existence to deliberate and provide technical input on various issues related to agriculture faced by farmers, researchers, industry and policy makers. The TAG consists of members from Industry, research and management with special experience and expertise in the concerned area. The TAG team works on providing necessary guidance starting from sensor selection, IOT, control to data warehousing, technology solutions for biogas plant and greenhouse cultivation, and subsidy issues. ISAE exhorts members particularly young ones to take full advantage of this innovative initiative of ISAE to enhance their human resources, skill and overall personality.

Revamping of ISAE website has been a major issue taken by ISAE on priority. With the hard efforts of the local executive committee, the new ISAE website is launched with features line online publication system, online membership system, personal dashboard for members, industry information interface and many other advance features. The upgraded new website will meet the expectations of members both from India and abroad, and will be helpful immensely in growth and development of ISAE. 

Indra Mani
President ISAE