There is a sound that most Indians have heard since childhood, although few of us consciously recognise it as such. It is the gentle splash of water in a flooded paddy field, ankle-deep and glistening, where the rice that eventually reaches our plates spends weeks growing with its roots submerged.
But that water comes at a huge cost. At one of India’s most renowned technology institutions, better known for work involving rockets and microchips, researchers have begun paying attention to the problem.
“IIT Madras is also looking at what you call precision agriculture,” Professor V. Kamakoti, Director of IIT Madras, told India Today Digital during an exclusive interview on campus. “Precision, where I can use a minimal amount of water and grow rice, grow sugarcane, etc.”
It was a brief comment, but it touches upon one of the biggest and least-discussed challenges facing Indian agriculture.
WHY DOES GROWING RICE IN INDIA USE SO MUCH WATER?
Rice is essentially cultivated in standing water. Farmers flood their fields so that the crop can grow in several inches of water, an environment that suits rice while suppressing weeds. However, this method also makes rice one of the most water-intensive crops used to feed people.
A detailed study of paddy cultivation in India found that producing one kilogram of rice requires an average of 1,500 to 2,000 litres of water. In Punjab and Haryana, where farmers rely heavily on groundwater instead of rainfall, consumption rises to between 2,270 and 2,672 litres per kilogram. Considering how frequently rice is eaten in households across India, the scale of water use becomes enormous.
Producing a single kilogram of rice can use over 2,000 litres of water in heavily irrigated Indian states. (Photo: Unsplash)
This is not merely a problem confined to certain states. Agriculture accounts for around 90 per cent of India’s freshwater consumption, with several water-intensive crops responsible for a large share of that demand. Rice alone is estimated to consume more than one-third of the irrigation water used globally.
Sugarcane, another crop mentioned by Professor Kamakoti, is similarly demanding. It requires substantial moisture over its long growing season, and India is among the world’s biggest producers of sugarcane.
IS THIS PART OF MISSION PRAVARTAK?
The technology being discussed fits naturally within the work of Mission Pravartak, officially known as the IITM Pravartak Technologies Foundation. It is IIT Madras’s Technology Innovation Hub, supported by the Department of Science and Technology through the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems.
The foundation focuses on technologies such as sensors, networks and control systems — essentially many of the tools required for precision agriculture. Pravartak has also conducted collaborative workshops with Canadian partners exploring the use of artificial intelligence in precision farming.
(Read about IIT Madras’s sensor-based car seat, which can detect when a driver is about to fall asleep, here.)
WHAT DOES PRECISION AGRICULTURE ACTUALLY MEAN?
At its core, precision agriculture follows a simple principle: provide a plant with exactly what it needs, without wasting resources.
Several technologies work together to achieve this. Sensors placed in the soil monitor moisture levels, allowing farmers to determine when crops actually require water instead of relying on visual judgment. Drip irrigation can then deliver controlled quantities of water directly to the roots rather than flooding the entire field.
Satellite and drone imagery adds another layer by identifying areas of a farm that may be under stress well before those problems become obvious to someone inspecting the crops on foot.
For rice cultivation, researchers have already demonstrated the benefits of a technique known as alternate wetting and drying. Instead of keeping fields continuously submerged, farmers allow the soil to dry slightly between irrigation cycles. This can significantly reduce water consumption while maintaining little to no reduction in yield. The crop remains the same — only the way it is cultivated changes.
WHY DOES THIS MATTER TO A WARMING, WATER-STRESSED INDIA?
India is the world’s biggest consumer of groundwater, and in several major rice- and sugarcane-producing regions, groundwater levels are declining further each year. Rising temperatures add to the pressure, as crops generally require more water as conditions become hotter.
That makes precision agriculture more than a high-tech farming concept borrowed from wealthy countries. It is increasingly tied to whether a nation of more than a billion people can continue producing enough food while its available water resources shrink.
If an institution with IIT Madras’s engineering expertise, capabilities in sensors and data science, and track record of turning laboratory research into real-world applications seriously focuses on agricultural water conservation, its success will not simply be judged by the number of research papers it produces. The real measure will be the impact on groundwater levels.
The direction is becoming increasingly clear. The next major development to emerge from IIT Madras may not necessarily involve computing. It could be something much simpler: a rice field producing the same harvest while consuming only a fraction of the water it once required.
