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Dr. Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University, Pusa

In the imperial Gazetteer of India 1878, Pusa was recorded as a government estate of about 1350 acres in Darbhanba. It was acquired by East India Company for running a stud farm to supply better breed of horses mainly for the army. Frequent incidence of glanders disease (swelling of glands), mostly affecting the valuable imported bloodstock made the civil veterinary department to shift the entire stock out of Pusa. A British tobacco concern Beg Sutherland & co. got the estate on lease but it also left in 1897 abandoning the government estate of Pusa. Lord Mayo, The Viceroy and Governor General, had been repeatedly trying to get through his proposal for setting up a directorate general of Agriculture that would take care of the soil and its productivity, formulate newer techniques of cultivation, improve the quality of seeds and livestock and also arrange for imparting agricultural education. The government of India had invited a British expert. Dr. J. A. Voelcker who had submitted as report on the development of Indian agriculture. As a follow-up action, three experts in different fields were appointed for the first time during 1885 to 1895 namely, agricultural chemist (Dr. J. W. Leafer), cryptogamic botanist (Dr. R. A. Butler) and entomologist (Dr. H. Maxwell Lefroy) with headquarters at Dehradun (U.P.) in the forest Research Institute complex. Surprisingly, until now Pusa, which was destined to become the centre of agricultural revolution in the country, was lying as before an abandoned government estate. In 1898. Lord Curzon took over as the viceroy. A widely traveled person and an administrator, he salvaged out the earlier proposal and got London’s approval for the appointment of the inspector General of Agriculture to which the first incumbent Mr. J. Mollison (Dy. Director of Agriculture, Bombay) joined in 1901 with headquarters at Nagpur The then government of Bengal had mooted in 1902 a proposal to the centre for setting up a model cattle farm for improving the dilapidated condition of the livestock at Pusa estate where plenty of land, water and feed would be available, and with Mr. Mollison’s support this was accepted in principle. Around Pusa, there were many British planters and also an indigo research centre Dalsing Sarai (near Pusa). Mr. Mollison’s visits to this mini British kingdom and his strong recommendations. In favour of Pusa as the most ideal place for the Bengal government project obviously caught the attention for the viceroy.

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20191
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Subject: Soil and Water Engineering × Author: Bhawana × End date: 2023 ×
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    ThesisItemOpen Access
    Drought assessment and impact of land use land cover change on surface water extent of Bihar using remote sensing and GIS
    (Dr. Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University, Pusa, Samastipur, 2019) Bhawana; Prasad, Sudarshan
    The captured satellite datasets using advanced techniques such as remote sensing (RS) and its processing to extract the information using geographic information system (GIS) have been used for detection of droughts and its mapping for the Bihar state. Meteorological droughts over various places of Bihar during monsoon season were identified using standard precipitation index (SPI) through software for SPI computation. The daily rainfall estimates of time duration of 67 years from 1951 to 2017 extracted from satellite datasets viz. Asian Precipitation Highly Resolved Observational Data Integration towards evaluation of water resources (APHRODITE) of duration 47 years from 1951 to 1997 and Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) of duration 20 years from 1998 to 2017 were used for the purpose. The whole area of the state was divided into total number of 301 grid points of 0.25° × 0.25° resolutions and monthly time series of rainfall (mm) estimates were obtained for each grid points from daily rainfall estimates obtained from TRMM and APHRODITE. These datasets of monthly time series were validated with rainfall data of monthly time series of 20 years duration from 1998 to 2017 observed at rain gauge station, Pusa using statistical techniques Thus, spatio-temporal maps of SPI based meteorological drought were developed for the years 2000 to 2017 for the area under study. Vegetation condition index (VCI) estimated through MODIS NDVI products obtained from USGS Earth Explorer for Bihar state were composited for Kharif and Rabi season from year 2000 to 2017. Spatio-temporal maps of NDVI and VCI for Kharif as well as Rabi season were developed based on vegetation indices for the years from 2000 to 2017. Using LANDSAT-5 (TM) and LANDSAT-8 (OLI/TIRS) imageries unsupervised image classification was performed. The Land use-land cover maps were generated for the years 2008 and 2018 with six feature classes namely agricultural land, settlement, vegetation, waste land, water body and sand were identified. Analysis of SPI revealed that the year 2006 experienced moderate dry conditions in the districts like Kishanganj, Araria, Purnea, Katihar and Gopalganj. In the year 2013 districts like West Champaran, Saran, Gopalganj Sheohar, Vaishali, Muzaffarpur and Samastipur faced moderately dry conditions repeating the trend in 2016. In all the years from 2000-2017 majority of the study area experienced mild drought. However, in case of 2007, almost all the districts of the study area having the extreme wet condition because of high rainfall during monsoon season. The temporal variation of NDVI in the year from 2000 to 2017 showed that most of the south-western districts of the state noticed the low value of NDVI ranging from 0.2 to 0.4 during Kharif season of almost all years. During the wet year of 2007, the high value of NDVI (>0.5) was noticed in almost every district except Samatipur, Darbhanga and Khagaria which experienced highly wet condition. During entire period of analysis lush vegetation with high value NDVI of more than 0.6 was noticed except for Banka and Jamui districts which experienced moderately dry condition in almost every year from 2000 to 2017. Spatio-temporal maps with varying VCI, showed the moderate to no drought conditions in the study area. In the year 2000, extremely good vegetation condition was observed decreasing in each year especially in the year 2005 in which almost entire area experienced low value of VCI ranging from 0.5 to 0.2 indicating fair vegetation condition. During Rabi season districts like Banka and Jamui show consistent poor vegetation condition in the years from 2000 to 2016. Analysis of Land use-land cover map for the years 2008 and 2018 depicted that there was drastic change in most of the feature classes. The water body shrinked to 2.13 % with areal loss of water body by 35.74 km2.