Meerut: With a finding about how a particular climate condition favours a certain crop, two class XI students of Meerut’s DAV Centenary Public School, Shraddha Sharma and Arushi Rastogi, have won the CBSE National Science Competition 2017-18. The theme of the competition was “Effect of Climate Change on Agriculture and its mitigation and adaptive techniques/methods”.The students based their research on data spanning over 25 years from the Punjab Agriculture University (Ludhiana) and India Meteorological Department (Delhi). They found that if there were more than 44 foggy days in a year, wheat would be the best crop for farmers to sow, as the its yield would be highest in that weather condition. Similarly, if there were less than 44 foggy days in a year, potatoes’ yield would be the highest. All the farmers had to do, the students said, was to seek a weather prediction for the next nine months from their nearest India Meteorological Department on a nominal charge of Rs 20.The duo beat over 1,000 schools to win the contest at the national level. They were supervised by their Physics head of the department Anurag Rastogi, who had had high hopes from them once they topped the regional level of the competition. The finals of the event were held at Mount Abu School (Rohini) in Delhi.“The idea of the project was finalised keeping in mind the fact that agriculture is the backbone of our country and many farmers commit suicide due to low yield of their crop. To help farmers have a fair idea about which crop to sow in a particular year, the research of the project was taken forward,” said Sharma, a student of the Science stream. On why they had chosen wheat and potato when sugarcane was the crop that was mostly grown in West UP, Rastogi said, “Wheat is the staple food of India. In fact, wheat and potato are the two food items that are mainly consumed in Northern India and hence should help farmers sell their produce. Consumers will also be able to access them at a fair price.”“Visits to Punjab Agriculture University (Ludhiana) and India Meteorological Department (Delhi) were made and statistics of the last 25 years were gathered. Then, graphs were plotted and the research done. We eventually came to the inference that if there are more than 44 foggy days in a year, wheat yield is likely to be high and if there are less than 44 foggy days in a year, potato yield should be high,” said the superviser of the project.A static model for the project was developed and shown to the judges of the competition. Also, since the top 15 models selected in the CBSE National Science Competition go to the All India Science Congress, Sharma and Rastogi’s rank might lead them to an international forum if the government of India plans to adopt the research.

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