A training course on Soil-Water Conservation and Watershed Management for the IFS Probationers has been inaugurated by ICAR-Indian Institute of Soil and Water Conservation (ICAR-IISWC), Dehradun at Indira Gandhi National Academy Forest Academy (IGNFA), Dehradun, today, 12.2.2024. The program is sponsored by IGNFA and scheduled during 12th to 23rd Feb. 2024.Dr M Madhu, Director, ICAR-IISWC in his inaugural address spoke on the importance of soil-water conservation to sustain national productivity, livelihoods and food security. He usurped the participants to take advantage of the rich experience of the resource persons.Dr Jagmohan Sharma, Director, IGNFA highlighting the importance of soil, and water resources requested the IFS probationers to take part actively in the training activities and interact with the resources persons productively to get maximum benefit out of the training program scheduled especially for them.

Dr Charan Singh, Head, HRD & SS Division and course coordinator of the course spoke on the course content and schedule of the training program which is tailor-made to the requirement of IFS probationers. He said, the program includes both indoor sessions and field demonstrations by various subject-matter scientists and technical officers of the Institute.Dr M Muruganandam, Principal Scientist and Head (PME &KM) Unit, ICAR-IISWC made a presentation on the briefs of the training course scheduled for 2 weeks, to give a feel of the training content to the attendees. He spoke on the status of natural resources, challenges confronting their management, and various bio-engineering technologies, models, systems and concepts associated with soil-water conservation especially watershed prioritisation, mass erosion control, water harvesting and recycling, alternate land-use models, and integrated watershed management that would be communicated to the probationers during the schedule.

Dr RK Singh, Head (H&E), Dr Rajesh Kaushal, Principal Scientist, Er SS Shrimali, Sr Scientist, Dr Matber Singh, Sr Scientist, Dr Trisha Roy, Sr Scientist, Sh Suresh Kumar, CTO, and Sh A K Chauhan, CTO, IISWC and KR Joshi, ACTO besides the faculty members of the IGNFA were present during the inauguration.A total 120 IFS Probationers attended the inaugural session and are undergoing the special training both at IGNFA and ICAR-IISWC.