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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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20221
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Subject: Soil and Water Engineering × Author: SINHA, MADHUSUDAN × Start date: 2022 × Type: Thesis ×
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    ThesisItemOpen Access
    Analysis of Morphometric Characteristics and Land use/Land cover Dynamics of Indravati Catchment Using Geospatial Technique
    (DRPCAU, PUSA, 2022) SINHA, MADHUSUDAN; Suresh, Ram
    The present research work was conducted in the Indravati catchment which is an integral part of Godavari basin. ArcGIS software and Google Earth Engine, a cloud-based platform, were primarily used to determine the morphometric parameters and assess the dynamics of land use and cover change. The study area was first delineated using ArcSWAT tool with SRTM DEM (1-Arc-Global with 30 m resolution) in ArcGIS followed by computation of areal, relief and linear aspects along with all sub-catchments. Three sets of time periods, 2011, 2016, and 2021, were examined using LANDSAT pictures to assess the classification of land use and land cover with changing dynamics. Total six classes- waterbodies, forested areas, agricultural land, built-up areas, barrenland, and rangeland were used in the LULC classification scheme. The supervised classification scheme, Random Forest algorithm was used by the Google Earth Engine to analyse this LULC categorization. Assessment of LULC dynamics were determined by Quantum-GIS using semi-automatic classification plugin. Watershed delineation was accomplished using ArcSWAT, in which maximum and minimum elevation were found as 1361 m and 78 m with total area 40533.24 sq. km. The morphometric parameters were determined for the Indravati catchment and its nine sub-catchments such as drainage related aspects like stream order, drainage density, stream frequency, form factor, circulatory ratio etc were computed. This research showed that the 7th order was the trunk order stream, with 10810 total streams, of which the first four orders contributed 98.77 percent of the streams with a mean bifurcation ratio of 11.792 for the Indravati catchment. For sub-catchments, these parameters were also calculated. The overall accuracy and Kappa statistic for LULC classification were found to be 76.43 % and 70.38 %, 77.05 % % 71.05 % and 83.78 % and 80.16 % for year 2011, 2016 and 2021 respectively. The LULC change dynamics were observed between the years of 2011 and 2021, and it was found that, as a result of industrialization and population growth, the area extent of waterbodies, agricultural land, and rangeland decreased by -35.43 percent, -7.63 percent, and -1.32 percent, respectively, while settlement and barrenland increased by 39.34 and 55.92 percent. Since, there are tropical dense forests in this study area that become more extensive without human intervention, there has been an 8.40 percent (631.959 km2), increase in the area covered by forests. For the time periods 2011-2016, 2016-2021, and 2011-2021, it was observed that the total area of 25788.07 km2, 26844.78 km2, and 26471.19 km2 remained unchanged, whereas the areas of 14054.62 km2, 14737.74 km2, and 13681.78 km2 got considerable changes.