ISRO’s ‘eye in the sky’ to put new coffee-growing areas on the map

The government has begun mapping coffee plantations inventory across the country through remote sensing as the cultivation of the beverage crop has moved beyond the traditional areas into new frontiers in recent years.

The state-run Coffee Board has partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation’s National Remote Sensing Centre to carry out geospatial mapping to estimate the latest inventory of the plantations.

The two-year project, ‘Geospatial Inventory of Coffee Plantations at National Level (GeoCUP)’, is being carried out in the traditional coffee-growing regions, non-traditional areas and in the North-Eastern States, said B Raghuramulu, Director of the Balehonnur-based Central Coffee Research Institute.

“There is currently no mechanism to update the areas under coffee,” Raghuramulu said. “We were dependent on the information provided by the extension workers and on the data generated from disbursal of subsidies to the growers among other mechanisms.

The feeling was that some areas under coffee have not come on record. The GeoCUP project is to update the total area under coffee.”

Pilot shows increase in area

A pilot project, carried out in the six taluks of Karnataka, the largest coffee-producing State, from 2013 to 2015, revealed a 14 per cent increase in plantation area, Raghuramulu said.

GeoCUP is being carried out in the traditional coffee-growing areas of Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. It will also be carried out in the non-traditional areas of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, where new areas have been coming under the beverage crop.

The survey will also cover the North-Eastern States, where coffee cultivation has made inroads in recent years.

The traditional areas account for 82 per cent of the area under coffee plantations, while the non-traditional areas, including Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, account for around 16.5 per cent; the North-Eastern States account for the rest.

Over the past decade, the area under coffee grew 14 per cent, with much of the growth coming from non-traditional areas. In 2015-16, the coffee cultivation area was 4,34,436 hectares, against 3,81,085 ha in 2006-07.

Satellite images

The use of satellite images under GeoCUP will be complemented by limited-scale validation of data on the ground. “We will validate the data thrown up by the images with an actual survey on the ground in about 10-15 per cent of the plantation areas,” an official said.

CCRI’s Raghuramulu said GeoCUP would use various filters to map coffee plants as they are largely grown under the shade of other trees and at different elevations.

Although the survey will help assess the actual area under coffee cultivation, it may not be possible to get a variety-wise break-up, he said. India grows both the Arabicas, the mild and premium variety, and the Robustas.

At 3.16 lakh tonnes, the output for the current coffee year ending September will be 9 per cent lower than last year’s 3.48 lakh tonnes.

The lower output is attributed to the poor monsoon impacting the production in the key growing regions of Karnataka.

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