About us

The All India Coordinated Project on Use of Saline Water in Agriculture was first sanctioned during the IV Five Year Plan under the aegis of Indian Council of Agricultural Research, New Delhi at four research centres namely Agra, Bapatla, Dharwad and Nagpur to undertake researches on saline water use for semi–arid areas with light textured soils, arid areas of black soils region, coastal areas and on the utilization of sewage water respectively. During the V Five Year plan, the work of the project continued at the above four centres. In the VI Five Year Plan, four centres namely Kanpur, Indore, Jobner and Pali earlier associated with AICRP on Water Management and Soil Salinity were transferred to this Project whereas the Nagpur Centre was dissociated. As the mandate of the Kanpur and Indore centres included reclamation and management of heavy textured alkali soils of alluvial and black soil regions, the Project was redesignated as All India Coordinated Research Project on Management of Salt Affected Soils and Use of Saline Water in Agriculture. Two of its Centres located at Dharwad and Jobner were shifted to Gangavati (w.e.f. 01.04.1989) and Bikaner (w.e.f. 01.04.1990) respectively to work right at the locations having large chunks of land afflicted with salinity problems. During the VII Plan, Project continued at the above locations. During VIII Five Year Plan, two new centres at Hisar and Tiruchirappalli were added. These Centres started functioning from 1 January 1995 and 1997, respectively. Further, during XII Five Year Plan, four new Volunteer centres namely Bathinda, Port Blair, Panvel and Vyttila were added to this AICRP. These four centres started functioning from 2014. At present, this AICRP has 8 main cooperating centres and 4 volunteer centres with project coordinating unit at ICAR-CSSRI, Karnal to address issues of reclamation and management of salt affected soils and use of poor quality ground waters under different agro-climatic conditions.