The CGIAR’s Excellence in Agronomy (EiA) project team members namely, Dr. Virender Kumar, EiA Regiona Lead, IRRI, Dr. Peter Craufurd, CSISA Lead, CIMMYT and Dr. Andrew Mc Donald from Cornell University visited ICAR-CRIDA on 14th February, 2024 to review the progress and way forward with regard to the activity ‘Prioritizing Agronomy in Changing Environment (PAiCE)’ an initiative under EiA.

Dr.V.K. Singh, Director, CRIDA welcomed the CGIAR’s scientists and briefed about the work done related to PAiCE. Dr. Virender Kumar has highlighted the importance of PAiCE in prioritisation of potential agronomic adaptation options that could effectively counter key climatic challenges and production constraints against important crop commodities in EIGP which enable the administrators to identify potential investment options in Eastern IGP.

Dr. BMK Raju, Principal Scientist, ICAR-CRIDA who is the lead of CRIDA team for PAiCE has discussed the issues and challenges in pre-population of data in the PAiCE tool as well as the requirements for taking up next stakeholder consultation workshop. The discussions have taken place between ICAR-CRIDA team and EiA project team under the chairmanship of Dr. V.K. Singh, Director, ICAR-CRIDA with regards to present status and issues in implementing the PAiCE in Eastern Indo-Gangetic plains (EIGP) in India. Director, CRIDA provided several sources of valuable published resources which will be useful for pre-population of PAiCE tool.

Dr. Peter Craufurd has emphasized for documentation of entire process of PAiCE in EIGP which will be useful for other stakeholders and also given the way forward and future plan of action. Dr. Andrew McDonald has provided valuable inputs with regard to climatic challenges.Finally, the meeting ended with concluding remarks by Dr. V.K. Singh, Director, CRIDA.