CRIDA has a 9000 sq m spacious building located at Santoshnagar in the eastern corner of Hyderabad city. The Institute has excellent laboratories, guesthouse, trainees hostels, seminar halls, museum, auditorium and two well laid out research farms. Over the years, the Institute has built modern facilities for conducting research and training. A synoptic over-view of the facilities is provided below. Laboratories - CRIDA has 15 well-equipped laboratories to support research in different disciplines of natural resources management and crop sciences.
Soil physics: The laboratory, besides basic facilities, has instruments to measure physical properties of soil and special equipment such as particle size analyzer, modulus of rupture apparatus, time domain reflectometer, rainfall simulator, hysteresis apparatus, pressure plates and temperature data pads. The laboratory supports research and training in soil and water management, land degradation and resource mapping.
Soil chemistry: The laboratory is equipped with important instruments for estimating essential nutrients required for plant growth. It supports research activities on integrated nutrient management, soil quality assessment, organic matter dynamics, carbon sequestration etc.
Plant physiology: The laboratory has facilities to conduct research in stress physiology, plant nutrition, crop modelling and climate change. It is equipped with leaf area and transpiration measurement systems, osmometer, cold centrifuges, plant canopy analyzer and sapflow systems and portable photosynthesis analyser.
Agronomy: The laboratory is equipped with all basic instruments for soil and plant analyses, neutron moisture probes and root length measurement systems. It supports research activities in soil and water management and crop husbandry.
Soil physics: The laboratory, besides basic facilities, has instruments to measure physical properties of soil and special equipment such as particle size analyzer, modulus of rupture apparatus, time domain reflectometer, rainfall simulator, hysteresis apparatus, pressure plates and temperature data pads. The laboratory supports research and training in soil and water management, land degradation and resource mapping.
Microbiology: The laboratory is equipped with facilities to conduct research on agriculturally important micro-organisms including molecular characterization. Important equipments include phase contrast and stereo microscopes, gas chromatograph, vacuum concentrators, PCR and electrophoresis systems. Plant molecular biology and tissue culture laboratory: The laboratory is well equipped with up-to-date facilities for carrying out research activities pertaining to molecular biology of abiotic stress tolerance in rainfed crops such as PCR machines, Gel documentation system, Gene gun, Southern, Western and Northern blotting for achieving their objectives. The plant tissue culture laboratory undertakes research on tree micropropagation.
Entomology: The Entomology laboratory is equipped with modern instruction facilities and equipments relating to insect rearing, bio-pesticide evaluation, testing of pesticides, studies on pest development and assessing the effect of climate change on insect life cycles.
Plant pathology: The laboratory is equipped with state-of-the-art facilities to pursue research in disease epidemiology in relation to weather, development of cost effective and eco-friendly disease management options, integrated disease management and plant growth promoting microbes.
Central laboratory: Besides the discipline-wise research facilities highlighted above, the Institute has a central laboratory, which has state-of-theart instruments, Inductivity Coupled Plasma (ICP) spectrometer, atomic absorption spectrophotometer, auto analyser, CNS analyzer, HPLC and TOC analyzer. This laboratory not only supports research at CRIDA but also assists the entire research network on rainfed agriculture in the country and provides analytical services to institutions and individuals on payment.
Agrometeorology and databank: The Institute is the coordinating centre for research and training in agrometeorology since the VII Five Year Plan, and has built up excellent equipment support. The centre has automatic weather stations, line quantum sensors, Bowen's ratio apparatus, spectro radiometers and the relevant computer packages for processing historical weather data for agrometeorological planning. State-of-the-art facilities for quality checking, storing of the meteorological data of all the AICRPAM centres and other weather stations of the country are also available. It also maintains a website cropweatheroutlook.ernet.in providing agrometeorological information, current weather status and contingency crop plans to aid the rainfed farmers across the country.
Hydrology: CRIDA has established excellent infrastructure with GIS and GPS facilities for conducting hydrology experiments. Computer controlled rainfall simulator and large tilting flume have been installed, which are useful in conducting micro plot experiments under controlled conditions.
Agroforestry: Agroforestry laboratory has facilities for like soil and plant analysis, including fully automated kjeldahl nitrogen system, and equipment for estimation of aromatic oils and secondary metabolites in medicinal, aromatic and dye yielding plants.
Horticulture: A new laboratory has been established during X five year plan for analysis for soil, plant, fruit, leaf and other horticultural samples/products. There is also a cool chamber for storage of fruits and vegetables and their value added products. Animal sciences: A new wing has been added in Animal Science in the X-plan covering both Animal Husbandry and Animal Nutrition for estimation of proximate principles, fibre fractions, in-vitro digestibility of feeds and fodders, de-worming & vaccination of livestock, metabolic studies with small ruminants, clinical biochemistry parameters like serum, proteins, cholesterol, calcium, magnesium, albumin, etc.
GIS: The GIS laboratory supports in-house digitization, mapping and analysis of watersheds, land use, land cover change analysis and mapping of soil erosion, drought incidence, and land degradation. The laboratory is also equipped with advanced software like ArcGIS (Ver.9.0.) with two add-on modules - ArcEngine and ArcPad, digital satellite data interpretation software - ERDAS Imagine (Ver.9.0.) with virtual and vector GIS addon modules for analysis and a Trimble DGPS.
Transgenic glasshouse and green house: A transgenic glasshouse conforming to containment standards for evaluating transgenic crops is available in the Institute. Apart from this, the Institute has a net house and climate controlled glasshouse for conducting pot culture experiments. Climate change study facilities: CRIDA has set up 6 Open Top Chambers (OTC) to study the impact of elevated carbon dioxide on crops.
Bio-resource centre: A bio-resource centre for production and sale of biological pesticides and biofertilizers was set up at Hayathnagar Research Farm (HRF).
Farmers' service laboratory: A research and farmer's service laboratory was set up at HRF to cater to the analytical needs of experiments at HRF as well as of the farmers.
Library and information services : The Institute has a Central Library with a collection of over 8963 books and 5169 back volume of periodicals upto March, 2013. It subscribes to 126 Indian, 13 International Journals and 4 Foreign Databases viz., AGRICOLA, AGRIS, CROP-CD and SOIL-CD are subscribed. The ICAR under National Agricultural Innovation Project (NAIP) has established a Consortium for e-Resources in Agriculture (CeRA) to access 2000 + scholarly peer reviewed e-journals from the most renowned publishers in the disciplines of agriculture and related sciences. This online e-resource is available across 150 + Agricultural Research Institutes, Project Directorates, and SAUs under NARS. The Library is also powered with SOUL software from INFLIBNET for in-house library management. Extensive information is collected and maintained on all aspects of rainfed agriculture.