Climate smart agriculture is an approach that helps to transform and reorient agricultural systems to effectively support sustained crop productivity and ensuring food security in a scenario of changing climate. To feed an expanding population, the annual world food production will need to increase by many fold in the coming decades. However, the impacts of climate change, which include increasing temperatures, shifting precipitation patterns, frequent extreme weather events and the loss of ecosystem services and biodiversity will certainly undermine agricultural production systems and food systems, especially in developing countries where poverty, hunger and malnutrition are commonly prevalent. The agricultural sector including crop and livestock production, forestry, fisheries and aquaculture is a major contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions. To meet these challenges, FAO has developed and promoted the concept of climate-smart agriculture. Climate-smart agriculture has three objectives: sustainably increasing the agricultural productivity and the incomes of agricultural producers and strengthening the capacities of agricultural communities. Hence, accordingly this compilation has been prepared with 16 chapters, covering various aspects of conventional and molecular aspects in various crops like cereals, pulses, oilseeds, commercial crops with a special chapter on Quality seeds in climate smart agriculture for sustaining crop productivity and improving livelihood security.
Dr. M. Prakash obtained his B.Sc. (Ag.) and M.Sc. (Ag.) from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, India in 1988 and 1990 respectively. He did his Ph.D. from Annamalai University. He was awarded with National Merit Scholarship, Government of India during 1981-1988 and ICAR-Junior Fellowship during 1988-1990. His expertise in abiotic stress tolerance is well recognised by invitations to serve in the Editorial Board/ Committees of several academic journals, awards and Fellowships like Crop Research Award in 2004, Best Researcher Award in Annamalai University in 2010, and Fellowships like FELLOW of Indian Society of Plant Physiology, New Delhi in 2015 (FISPP) and FELLOW of National Academy of Biological Sciences, Chennai, 2015 (FNABS). Professor Dr. M. Prakash is having around 28 years of teaching and research experience. He has guided 8 Ph.D. scholars and 25 PG scholars. His credentials include publications of 130 referred research papers, ten books published by National publishers, and one book chapter published in SESAME by globally reputed CRC Press. He has organized 8 National Seminars and completed five research projects. He has earned the status of Departmental Research Support with Special Assistance Programme of University Grants Commission (UGC-SAP- DRS) to the Department with financial assistance of Rs. 50 lakhs at Phase-I (2009-2014) and Rs. 1.025 Crore at Phase-II (2015-2020) level.
