ISRO’s Satellite to find your New Coffee Plantations
An intresting project launched by Government called ‘Geospatial Inventory of Coffee Plantations at National Level (GeoCUP)’- to survey and find out the coffee plantations across the country in order to update the areas under coffee in country’s map.
The State-run Coffee Board has partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation’s National Remote Sensing Centre to carry out geospatial mapping to estimate the latest inventory of the plantations.
According to Raghuramulu, Director of the Balehonnur-based Central Coffee Research Institute – In recent years, coffee cultivation has made inroads in to non-traditional areas,North-Eastern States,But there is no mechanism to find these new plantations and update our records so i feel that some areas under coffee have not come on record. The GeoCUP project is to update the total area under coffee.
As of now only way to find areas under coffee by information provided by the extension workers and on the data generated from disbursal of subsidies to the growers among other mechanisms.
The two-year project, ‘Geospatial Inventory of Coffee Plantations at National Level (GeoCUP)’, is being carried out in the traditional coffee-growing regions, non-traditional areas and in the North-Eastern States.
GeoCUP is being carried out in the traditional coffee-growing areas of Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. It will also be carried out in the non-traditional areas of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, where new areas have been coming under the beverage crop.
The survey will also cover the North-Eastern States, where coffee cultivation has made inroads in recent years.
The traditional areas account for 82 per cent of the area under coffee plantations, while the non-traditional areas, including Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, account for around 16.5 per cent; the North-Eastern States account for the rest.
Over the past decade, the area under coffee grew 14 per cent, with much of the growth coming from non-traditional areas. In 2015-16, the coffee cultivation area was 4,34,436 hectares, against 3,81,085 ha in 2006-07.
Data shown in the Satellite images are validated with an actual survey on the ground in about 10-15 per cent of the plantation areas.There are various filters are applied to map coffee plants as they are largely grown under the shade of other trees and at different elevations.Although the survey will help assess the actual area under coffee cultivation, it may not be possible to get a variety-wise break-up, he said. India grows both the Arabicas, the mild and premium variety, and the Robustas.
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