Jorhat, March 16: Harendra Neog, a farmer of Chamua village in Lakhimpur district, is all too familiar with how the land lies and is smiling all the way home.

Neog bagged the best dryland farmer award recently for successfully participating in the National Initiative for Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA), increasing his annual income almost tenfold in the process.

The initiative is under the aegis of the All India Co-ordinated Research Project for Dryland Agriculture, being implemented in 22 centres across the country by CRIDA, Hyderabad. The Indian Council of Agriculture and Research, New Delhi, funds it.

In Lakhimpur, the Biswanath Chariali AICRPDA centre, Assam Agricultural University, has been implementing the initiative since 2012. The Lakhimpur unit also received the best centre award.

Pallab Kumar Sarma, the chief scientist of the research project, said Neog and his son Diganta owned nearly five bighas of agricultural land, on which they were sowing only paddy.

'Our centre guided him in crop diversification and he sowed nearly 22 crops per year on the land, which is part owned and part leased. Apart from paddy, he sowed mustard, cabbage, peas, pumpkins, different varieties of gourds, other vegetables and pulses,' Sarma said.

On how a place in Assam, particularly prone to flooding and heavy rainfall, could be selected under the dryland farming project, Sarma said in most places of Assam, the winter (Rabi) crop was not sown at all due to lack of irrigation.

'We have a prolonged dry season of nearly eight months after the monsoon is over. There is crop failure. In the recent years, we have had to contend with an erratic monsoon. Sometimes it turns dry mid-term or towards the end. We have to teach our rain-fed agricultural farmers how to cope with such situations,' he said.

Some of the technological interventions involve rainwater harvesting, renovation of ponds and use of climate-resilient seeds. 'Under our guidance, Neog was given interventions and an agriculture calendar, which helped in timely planting and harvesting of crops along with knowhow to tackle pests,' a scientist said.

Neog told The Telegraph over phone from Lakhimpur that he was extremely happy with the result. 'The number of crops I sowed yielded rich dividends and the profit I made was more than Rs 1 lakh in a year,' he said.

Panjab Singh, the director-general of ICAR, emphasised the need for research and development in dryland agriculture. Sarma said of 22 network centres, the Biswanath Chariali centre at Assam Agricultural University was the youngest. It bagged the prestigious Best Centre Award, along with Bangalore (1970) and Indore (1971).

The award was in recognition of all-round performance of the centres in research, extension and upscaling of technology among the rain-fed farmers.

Sarma said the centre was implementing the climate resilient technology in Dhemaji and Nalbari districts and effecting an upgrade in Sonitpur.