For the first time a Quarterly Review Meeting of AICRP on Weed Management was organized through video conferencing. Scientists from AICRP-WM and ICAR-DWR participated in the meeting. The meeting was started with the welcome remarks by Dr R P Dubey, In-Charge, AICRP-WM in which he mentioned that periodic review is essential to monitor the progress of the AICRP centres. He also stressed the need of timely submission of quality information as per the prescribed format from the centres as and when the information is needed for onward submission to the Council. Dr J S Mishra, Director, ICAR-DWR, in his brief remarks highlighted the basic objectives of conducting quarterly review meeting. He told that because of the COVID pandemic physical monitoring is not possible to assess the progress of the AICRP centres. Hence, in order to monitor the progress of the centres in executing the experiments and other issues periodical review is essential so that any mid-term correction could also be made after discussion. He reiterated timely submission of the information sought by the PC unit in the prescribed format so that the information could be compiled and submitted to the Council well in time.

Principal Investigators of 17 regular centres and 6 out of 7 voluntary centres made presentation on approved technical of programme, experimental findings, achievements, technology generated, budget utilization, online training, webinar conducted and publication. Discussion was held after each presentation and accordingly midterm correction was made and suggestion was given to the respective PI to improve the efficiency of the centre. The centres made satisfactory progress during the last quarter except a few centres for which PIs have been suggested to put additional efforts to improve the visibility of the respective centres.

At the end of the meeting Chairman in his concluding remark emphasized the importance of impact analysis on weed management technologies in terms of monitory gains. He urged the PIs to identify the crop wise promising weed management technologies generated by the centres included in State Package of Practices, area coverage by the technologies, number of farmers adopted the technologies, input cost reduction due to adoption of technologies, improvement in yield and monitory gain. He also suggested the PIs to develop the collaborative linkages with KVKs, State Line Department and other agencies to retrieve this information and to extrapolate the data. He appreciated all the centres for successfully conducting the Parthenium Awareness Week (16-22 August, 2021). The meeting ended with vote of thanks proposed by the In-charge, AICRP-WM.