The Carbonaceous Aerosol Emissions, Source Apportionment and Climate Impacts (COALESCE) is a multi-institutional Indian network project to better understand carbonaceous aerosol induced air quality and climate effects. This study presents time synchronized measurements of surface PM 2.5 concentrations made during 2019 at 11 COALESCE sites across India. The network median PM 2.5 concentration was 42 μg m −3 with the highest median value at Rohtak (99 μg m −3 ) and the lowest median value at Mysuru (26 μg m −3 ). The influence of six meteorological parameters on PM 2.5 were evaluated. Causality analysis suggested that temperature, surface pressure, and relative humidity were the most important factors influencing fine PM mass, on an annual as well as seasonal scale. Further, a multivariable linear regression model showed that, on an annual basis, meteorology could explain 16%-41% of PM 2.5 variability across the network. Concentration Weighted Trajectories (CWT) together with the results of causality analysis revealed common regional sources affecting PM 2.5 concentrations at multiple regional sites. Further, CWT source locations for all sites across the network correlated with the SMoG-India emissions inventory at the 95th percentile confidence. Finally, CWT maps in conjunction with emissions inventory were used to obtain quantitative estimates of anthropogenic primary PM 2.5 sectoral shares from a mass-meteorology-emissions reconciliation, for all 11 pan-India network sites. These estimates can help guide immediate source reduction and mitigation actions at the national level.Plain Language Summary Surface PM 2.5 mass causal associations with annual and seasonal meteorology during 2019 across 11 pan-India COALESCE network locations were examined. Temperature, surface pressure and relative humidity were the most influential factors on fine PM mass concentrations. However, across the country only 16%-41% of fine PM variability was explained by meteorology on an annual basis. A fusion of trajectory ensemble methods with national emissions inventory was used for apportioning anthropogenic primary PM 2.5 at all 11 locations. Mass-meteorology-emissions associations helped identify priority sectors for source control across the country.

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An assessment of soil fertility of Northern Light Soil area of FCV tobacco was carried out to study the status of soil macro and micronutrients. Soils of the study area are mostly moderately acidic in nature with low organic carbon and available nitrogen with a mean value of 0.29 % & 110 kg ha-1, respectively. Available phosphorus was high (88% samples) with a mean value of 92.6 kg ha-1. While the average available potassium content was 297 kg ha-1 with 48 % samples in medium class. Among available micronutrients, the available zinc content in 73 % of samples was very low – low (0.0 to 0.6 ppm).  Whereas the availability of copper in 25 % samples was very low to low as per the fertility class (0.0 - 0.30 ppm).  Available iron (18.8 -35.03 ppm) and manganese (17.03-21.5 ppm) contents were high in the region. Nutrient index of available nitrogen was 1.00 (Low) while, NI was 2.83 (High) & 2.36 (Medium) for available phosphorus and available potassium, respectively.

New advances in information technology led to the development of Expert Systems and their application in various sectors including farming. In India, agricultural production has been transformed into a multifaceted business enterprise. Indian agriculture to remain competitive needs the accumulation and integration of scientific knowledge, and information from many diverse sources.  Indian farmer often relies on agricultural specialists, advisors and agricultural research and development institutes for agricultural information for better decision making at the actual farm situation. Unfortunately, timely specialist assistance is not available when the farmer needs. Thus the situation demand for a ‘virtual expert’ who can give personalized expert advice to a large community of farmers, specific to their needs and aspirations considering various knowledge sources. The role of expert systems in tobacco sector and its applications in effective production and protection technologies have been discussed in this article. It is almost impossible for any human expert to consider every piece of available information before arriving at optimal decisions. To overcome this problem and provide precise information to the farmers, “expert systems” have been developed with a primary goal to make expertise available to clients and decision makers who need answers swiftly. The main aim is to deliver the required information and disseminate the up-to-date scientific knowledge in a readily accessible and easily understood form to the farmers. It is one of the most efficient extension tools to take the technology from scientists to the growers directly without any distortion of content which normally creeps in because of multiple agencies involved in conventional technology transfer systems. With this aim, ICAR-Central Tobacco Research Institute has developed a web-based expert system on tobacco using “Agridaksh”- an online tool developed by ICAR-Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute. This, online expert systems has the tremendous capacity to transfer location specific technologies and advice to the farmers with a greater precision

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