The science underneath the platform.
REALM Krishi makes scientifically defensible claims. This page documents the underlying methodologies — data sources, processing pipelines, MRV protocols, and validation procedures — so that government, investor and registry counterparties can evaluate the platform on technical grounds.
Sentinel-2 + Landsat-8/9 time-series processing.
All field-level crop intelligence is derived from publicly available Copernicus Sentinel-2 (10–30 m, 5-day revisit) and USGS Landsat-8/9 (30 m, 16-day revisit) optical imagery, processed through a standardised pipeline.
| Index | Bands | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| NDVI — Normalised Difference Vegetation Index | NIR, Red (B8, B4) | Crop vigour, biomass proxy, season tracking |
| NDMI — Normalised Difference Moisture Index | NIR, SWIR (B8, B11) | Canopy water content, irrigation timing |
| NDWI — Normalised Difference Water Index | Green, NIR (B3, B8) | Surface water, waterlogging detection |
| SAVI — Soil-Adjusted Vegetation Index | NIR, Red (B8, B4) + L | Sparse-canopy / early-season vigour |
| EVI — Enhanced Vegetation Index | NIR, Red, Blue (B8, B4, B2) | Dense-canopy & high-biomass crops |
Processing pipeline
- Acquisition: Daily ingestion from Sentinel Hub and Copernicus Open Access Hub for Maharashtra and Karnataka tiles.
- Cloud masking: Sentinel-2 Scene Classification Layer (SCL) applied; pixels classified as cloud, shadow, snow or cirrus are excluded.
- Spatial aggregation: Per-plot statistics (mean, median, p10/p90, standard deviation) computed using geo-fenced FPO boundaries.
- Temporal smoothing: Savitzky–Golay filter applied to per-plot NDVI time series to suppress residual noise.
- Baselining: 5-year historic baseline computed per plot; anomaly score is current value vs. baseline percentile.
- Alerting: Anomalies beyond ±1.5 σ trigger language-localised farmer alerts via WhatsApp and dashboard surfacing.
Verra VM0042 + Gold Standard pathway.
REALM Krishi's carbon programme is designed to qualify under two leading registries. Final methodology selection depends on the activity mix, baseline data availability and partner preference per FPO. Both pathways are technically supported.
| Layer | Approach | Verification |
|---|---|---|
| Methodology | Verra VM0042 (ALM) primary; Gold Standard SDG Impact for Smallholder Agriculture secondary | Third-party VVB-accredited |
| Baseline | Remote-sensing carbon stock estimation (NDVI, EVI, SAR biomass) + farmer historic activity survey | Stratified ground-truth sampling |
| Activity tracking | FPO-aggregated digital activity log (cover crop, residue retention, biochar, agroforestry, reduced tillage) | Random plot audits + satellite verification |
| Quantification | IPCC Tier 2 emission factors blended with locally calibrated soil-carbon models | Annual MRV reporting cycle |
| Issuance | VCU (Verra) or VER (Gold Standard) — held in FPO-controlled buffer pool until verified | Public registry retirement |
Smallholder aggregation principle
Most carbon registries impose minimum-project-size thresholds that exclude individual smallholders. REALM Krishi aggregates plots at the FPO level — typically 500–10,000 farmers — so the project meets registry economics while every contributing farmer retains traceable, individually attributable activity data and revenue share.
Farmer revenue split
Target split (to be confirmed per pilot MoU): 70% farmer, 20% FPO operating cost, 10% platform fee. Verification, registry and trader margins are paid out of the platform fee. All splits are published per project on the public dashboard.
IMD-primary, ensemble-blended forecasting.
Indian smallholders need forecasts they can trust enough to act on. We treat IMD as the source of record — its products are calibrated to Indian climatology — and use global ensembles to communicate forecast confidence.
| Source | Resolution | Use |
|---|---|---|
| IMD GFS / NCMRWF | ~12 km, 6-hourly | Primary 7-day forecast |
| ECMWF IFS | ~9 km, 6-hourly | Ensemble confidence + week 2 |
| NOAA GFS | ~13 km, 3-hourly | Convective / severe weather signal |
| IMD radar / nowcast | 1 km, 10-min | 0–6 hour storm alerts |
Forecast packaging
Raw model output is translated into farmer-actionable advisories: sow / don't sow this week, irrigate today, spray window open, harvest now to avoid forecast rain, etc. Advisory wording is generated by the REALM GPT Lab platform, locked to deterministic templates per crop and validated against agronomist-reviewed criteria.
Multilingual reasoning, agronomist-validated outputs.
Knowledge sources
- ICAR (Indian Council of Agricultural Research) crop manuals and package-of-practices
- State Department of Agriculture extension materials — Maharashtra, Karnataka
- Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK) advisory archives
- Victorian Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action on-farm trial data (where licensable)
- FAO and CGIAR crop-system references for cross-validation
Languages supported at launch
- Hindi — pan-India default
- Marathi — Maharashtra primary
- Kannada — Karnataka primary
- English — institutional and partner-facing
Safety & guardrails
The REALM GPT Lab platform applies layered guardrails: a domain-restricted knowledge base, deterministic templates for time-bound advisories (e.g. dosing recommendations are not generated freeform — they're surfaced from validated tables), and a human-in-the-loop escalation pathway routing low-confidence answers to a district agronomist within four working hours.
Compliant by construction. Sovereign by default.
REALM Krishi processes personal and geospatial data covered by India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 (DPDP) and, where Victorian partners are involved, by the Australian Privacy Principles. The platform is designed to satisfy both regimes simultaneously.
Core principles
- Data residency: All farmer and field data hosted in ap-south-1 (Mumbai); no personal data exits India by default.
- Consent: Multilingual opt-in at onboarding; granular toggles for advisory, carbon, dashboards, marketing.
- Right of erasure: Self-service deletion via WhatsApp command and FPO dashboard; 30-day full removal SLA.
- FPO data trusteeship: FPOs control aggregated data on behalf of members; institutional partners receive only aggregated layers unless individual consent is explicit.
- Carbon revenue chain of custody: All carbon-related data logged immutably; auditor-accessible via secured registry interface.
Certification roadmap
SOC 2 Type II readiness in pilot Year 1; ISO 27001 certification targeted for Year 2 as district-scale deployment begins.
"Victoria offers a depth and breadth of expertise across the entire agricultural supply chain… an opportunity to share knowledge."Victoria's India Strategy 2025-30, p.20 — Food & Agribusiness
Want the deep-dive?
The full technical whitepaper extends each of these sections with architecture diagrams, sample data flows, and the complete Vic Strategy alignment mapping.
- — Verra VCS / VM0042
- — Gold Standard SDG Impact Tools
- — IPCC AR6 Tier 2
- — India DPDP Act 2023
- — UN SDGs 2, 5, 13, 15