Sustainable agriculture production implies the ability of the production system to enhance productivity
towards the potential & maintain it without degrading the resource bases (such as land & water). To
achieve this, the United Nations has proposed 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) including SDG#2
(zero hunger) and SDG#6 (clean water and sanitation), which are directly linked to sustainable agriculture.
To strengthen my research activities in this direction, my goal has been to focus on precise irrigation and
nutrient management technologies with the help of UAVs and IoT-driven tools, by studying the
agricultural environment quality and using smart farm inputs.
A road map targeting sustainable agriculture has already been initiated at IIT Kharagpur: developed UAV-
based multispectral image analytics, developed wireless sensor-based data acquisition system (using IoT-
driven AI&ML models) for collection of soil moisture and water quality data from a remote location, and
synthesized smart fertilizers like nanohydroxyapatite and urea doped nanohydroxyapatite for enhancing
nutrient use efficiency.
To continue my passion for teaching undergraduate and postgraduate subjects with renewed knowledge
including setting up live laboratories through real-time river water quality systems and IITHO (IIT
Hydrological Observatory) and IoT Lab, and developing a course on IoT and UAVs in Agriculture, which will
be beneficial to the students on learning various data science techniques for real-time applications. I have
also initiated PhD research on “Predictive and Policy Decision-Making AI-ML Model for Mapping CKDu in
Uddanam region of Andhra Pradesh”, which is needy research for Uddanam people infected with kidney
diseases
Principal Investigator
- Enhancing Drought Monitoring Strategies to Mitigate Risks in the Agricultural Sector Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration (SPARC), Apex Committee of SPARC, Ministry of Education
Co-Principal Investigator
- Development of Portable Photonic Crystal Bloch Surface Wave Sensors for the Detection of Dithiocarbamate Pesticides in Agri-Food Systems Department of Science and Technology (DST)
Ph. D. Students
Durgam Maheshwar
Area of Research: Moisture and plant nutrients migration in soil
Perli Monisha
Area of Research: Nanofertilizers and environmental toxicity
Pradip Kumar Patra
Area of Research: Nanophotonic agri-food sensors
Pulakesh Das
Area of Research: Diffuse Agricultural Pollution
Resham Chawla
Area of Research: Water Management
Sudhakar Rawat
Area of Research: Groundwater quality
Sum Tateh
Area of Research: UAV image analytics for crop condition monitoring
MS Students
Mailapalli Avinash
Area of Research: Multispectral image analytics for crop condition monitoring
