Pune: Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has urged for adoption of modern technologies in farmers fields in facing against increasing agricultural challenges.

Addressing recently the valedictory and award ceremony of the first “Pune Agri Hackathon” held in Pune, Fadnavis emphasized the need for incubating agri-technologies showcased in the Hackathon and ensuring their effective commercialisation and delivery to farmers.

He stressed the importance of technologies in areas like precision irrigation, AI-driven harvesting tools, drone-spraying, machine learning for pest management, and post-harvest processing. Incubation centres should be set up in agricultural universities to support related startups and innovations in the agri-tech sector, he added.

Earlier, Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan announced that, under the “Clean Plant Program,” three out of 9 centres planned across India would be set up in Maharashtra. The three included: Grape Plant in Pune, Oranges Plant in Nagpur and Pomegranate Plant in Solapur.

Rs 300 crore has been allocated towards these Plants which will ensure supply of disease-free planting material aimed at producing 8 crore clean saplings annually.

Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar said that with agriculture contributing immensely to the nation’s economy, it was essential to bring efficient, low-cost technologies to the farm level, which faced challenges like labour shortage, rising costs and erratic weather. The hackathon is a step in the right direction and more such initiatives needed to be conducted statewide, he said.