By Fakir Balaji
Thiruvananthapuram, Jan 4 (IANS) Space technology and its applications can help India meet its food and energy security needs, a top space scientist said here Monday.

“Space technology and applications have a significant role to play in dealing with the challenges we are facing due to shortages and supply constraints,” said U.R. Rao, former chairman of the state-run Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

Listing out the major challenges facing India, Rao told delegates at the 97th Indian Science Congress (ISC2010) that if development of space technology was dramatic in the last five decades, it would be spectacular over the next 50 years, thanks to the increasing use of space technology to find solutions to man-made crises.

Besides food and energy security, the other challenges are ensuring environmental security, resource security, space security, space transportation, search for life in space, exploration of the universe and colonisation of Mars.

“Food productivity can be increased with another green revolution by using space technology with biological inputs,” Rao said at a space summit, being held as part of the premier science event, which began Sunday.

Noting that per capita food productivity in India at 1.7 tonne per hectare (ha) was perhaps the lowest in the world, Rao said enhancing the yield to at least 3.5 tonne/ha by 2020 was imperative to feed the growing population, which is already 1.13 billion by 2009.

As against India’s foodgrains production of about 220 million tonnes per annum, China produces about 350 million tonnes.

Similarly, the per capita energy usage in India is far lower than in other developed countries such as the US (15 times more), and Europe (7.5 times) and developing countries like China (2.3 times more).

“To increase the national gross domestic product (GDP) even by one percent, the energy production has to grow by 5.8 percent per annum,” Rao pointed out.

Space technology could also play a key role in coping with the country’s energy deficit. According to Rao, increasing the use of renewable sources such as solar, wind and biogas could be optimised with materials such as polymer-based silicon used in space applications.

“But the production cost of solar power has to be drastically brought down from Rs.23 crore per megawatt (mw), which is five times more costly than producing energy from coal,” Rao said.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) senior scientist John C. Mather, European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMESAT) director-general Lars Parhm and Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) director Marc Pircher also spoke at the plenary session on ‘Major Challenges in Space Science and Technology’.