Resilience Upscale Project

The Resilience Upscale project (www.resilienceindia.org) was conducted from October 1, 2024 to September 30, 2025. The focus of the upscale project is on scaling up selected sustainable and climate-resilient rice and relevant agricultural (CRRA) technologies, addressing barriers, and demonstrating the potential for scaling up in practice. Scaling up processes and multiplication are essential components of a systemic approach to innovation. The selected technology interventions are evidence-based (results from RESILIENCE and other ongoing projects in India) and have shown promising results.

These include: Direct Seeded Rice (DSR), Precision Soil and Nutrient Management (promoting digital tools for improving input use efficiency such as fertilizers and water), Alternate Wetting and Drying (AWD), farmer-led smart seed production systems, integrated farming systems (IFS)/diversified crop-livestock systems, among others. In addition to the CRRA systems, the project will demonstrate the use of alternatives to fossil fuels and electricity such as solar power and conduct a pilot assessment of biodegradable plastics for mulching.

The project will be implemented in two of the most climate-vulnerable states, Odisha and Assam, in India. It will directly operate and carry out upscaling in nine districts, reaching out to approximately 35,000 farmers, of which 35% will be women. In the project areas of Odisha and Assam, successful project activities have been disseminated and communicated through exposure visits, training sessions, awareness programs, demonstration activities, field days, workshops, publications, flyers, exhibitions, social media outreach, project website, communication campaign, press releases, and videos / films.

The project focused on four districts in Odisha: Puri, Dhenkanal, Ganjam, and Nayagarh, which represented different agro ecological and socioeconomic settings. The emphasis of the project was on building climate-resilient smallholders in these areas using the four building blocks of the Resilience project.

Objectives:

The main objective of the Resilience project is to improve agricultural productivity, adaptive capacity, and livelihoods of smallholders in response to climate and economic changes. This will be achieved by building resilience and strengthening the agricultural market value chains in the state of Odisha. The specific objectives of the project and corresponding key results/outputs achieved during the project period are briefly mentioned below.

• Interventions for Transformative Change – Climate Resilient Rice Agriculture (CRRA) Technologies (Lead :AAU & OUAT, Co-lead: NRRI & NIBIO)
• Knowledge Management, Capacity Building, Gender, and Youth Integration, (Lead: MSSRF)
• Stakeholder Integration, Upscaling Frameworks, Dissemination, & Exploitation Strategies(Lead: AAU and OUAT)
• Management & Coordination Platform (Lead: NIBIO)

Project Goals

• To increase sustainable productivity, farm income, and food and nutritional security in the highly climate vulnerable states of Assam and Odisha, India.
• This will be achieved through upscaling innovative evidence-based sustainable and climate resilient rice and relevant agricultural (CRRA) technologies.
• That will strengthen smallholders to adapt to climate change thereby enable transformative climate action.

Stakeholders:

The cross-disciplinary project is being implemented by a consortium of five organizations in collaboration with various stakeholders in Assam and Odisha. Stakeholders have been engaged from the early stages of the project through two registered stakeholder advisory committees (SACs). The Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research (NIBIO) is the main project coordinator, working in collaboration with Assam Agricultural University (AAU), Odisha University of Agricultural Technology (OUAT), National Rice Research Institute (ICAR-NRRI), and M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF).