Karnataka has opened a Centre of Excellence for Agricultural Innovation in Kalaburagi with an initial state outlay of ₹50 crore, chief minister Siddaramaiah announced on Wednesday according to economictimes.indiatimes.com.
The facility, located on 15 acres at the University of Agricultural Sciences campus, will house soil-testing labs, precision-farming demo plots and a plug-and-play greenhouse for startups. Officials told the newspaper that the first cohort of 12 agtech ventures will move in next month after a selection process run by the state’s agriculture department and the Karnataka Innovation and Technology Society.
Kalaburagi sits in the drought-prone Hyderabad-Karnataka region where yields of tur, jowar and sunflower lag the state average by 15-20%. The centre aims to reverse that gap by commercialising sensor-based irrigation, drone spraying and seed varieties bred for low-rainfall zones. Comparable state-backed agtech hubs include the 2021 Agri-Tech Centre of Excellence in Mohali and the 2022 pulses-focused facility in Guntur, both of which reported 30% yield gains in pilot villages within two years.
The government has set a 2026 deadline for the centre to validate and scale at least 50 technologies across 100,000 hectares in Kalaburagi, Yadgir and Bidar districts. Watch for the release of the first impact report in March 2025 and a follow-up funding ask of ₹75 crore in the state budget session, officials added.
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