Rice is a staple food for millions of people in Bangladesh, but growing it requires a lot of water and energy.
IRAS stands for Integrated Rice Advisory System. It analyzes data from the NASA/USGS Landsat mission, the NASA/JAXA Global Precipitation Measurement mission, and the U.S. National Weather Service’s Global Forecast System to provide weekly irrigation advisories to more than 10 million farmers across Bangladesh.
One of the many IRAS outputs that are routinely generated during the dry season at biweekly frequency using NASA data.The IRAS team estimates that the system can help reduce agricultural water waste by about 30 percent, cut fuel consumption by 45 percent, save $115 million annually in fuel subsidies, and lower carbon emissions by 300,000 tons per year.
“The synergistic use of Landsat, GPM, and GFS can help the world become more water-efficient and energy-efficient in growing food, while also becoming more affordable and convenient for farmers,” said Faisal Hossain, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Washington and leader of IRAS.IRAS works by combining satellite data on water use, precipitation, and weather forecasts with crop water demand characteristics to generate location-specific advisories for farmers.
The IRAS team completed its first nationwide effort in June 2023, after working with staff from Bangladesh’s Department of Agricultural Extension and Agro-Meteorological Information Service to develop and install the system. Hossain and his colleagues hope to expand the reach of IRAS in the future, as well as apply it to other water-intensive crops such as sugar cane. “Our hope is that this template can be applied to any region where we know what crop is being grown and what their crop water demand characteristics are,” Hossain said.
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