ICAR-IIHR, Bengaluru organised ICAR sponsored 21 days Winter School training programme on ‘“Implications and Impact Assessment of Climate Change on Pests, Natural Enemies and Pollinators in Horticultural Ecosystems”

ICAR sponsored 21 days Winter School training programme on “Implications and Impact Assessment of Climate Change on Pests, Natural Enemies and Pollinators in Horticultural Ecosystems” was organized by Division of Crop Protection, ICAR-Indian Institute of Horticultural Research, Bengaluru from 7^th to 27^th February, 2023. The Inaugural Programme of the Winter School was held on 07.02.2023 and Dr. PVR Reddy, Head, Division of Crop Protection delivered the Welcome Address. Dr. S N Sushil, Director, ICAR - NBAIR, Bengaluru graced as Chief Guest of the programme. Dr. S. K. Singh, Director, ICAR –IIHR delivered the Presidential address. Twenty two participants representing various ICAR institutes, State Agricultural Universities and other institutes from 13 different states attended this programme. Resource persons from several ICAR/ CSIR institutes and SAUs, besides ICAR-IIHR scientists, enlightened the participants, both offline and online, on various aspects of Implications and impact assessment of climate change on pests, natural enemies and pollinators and provided hands-on training on the use of modelling softwares  like CLIMEX, ILCYM, MaxEnt etc. for understanding climate change impact studies. In addition, online lectures were also arranged from speakers from International institutes like ICRISAT, Hyderabad; ICIPE, Nairobi, Kenya and National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan. Trainees were exposed to the facilities like OTC, FATE, CTGC, Phenomics etc. They were also taken for outdoor visits to ICAR-NBAIR, Bengaluru and GKVK, Bengaluru to expose them to the facilities and on-going research activities on impact of climate change on pests and natural enemies in various crops.  The training programme ended with Valedictory Session on 27.2.2023, chaired by Dr. N. K. Krishna Kumar, Former DDG (Hort. Sciences), ICAR-New Delhi. Certificates were distributed among the participants and they shared their feedback that they were highly satisfied and got benefitted through this training programme. Dr. V. Sridhar, Principal Scientist, Division of Crop Protection, ICAR - IIHR was the Course Director and Dr. R.H. Laxman, Principal Scientist, Division of Basic Sciences; Dr. R. Umamaheswari, Senior Scientist and Dr. Sandeep Kumar, Scientist, Division of Crop Protection were the Course Co-ordinators for this winter school.