To cope with worsening climate change and widening intergenerational equity issues, more impetus should be given to sustainable development. India, predominantly an agrarian economy, faces most pressing issues of sustainable development with a complex territorial hegemony of the population and their dynamic food demands. Regional production systems play a vital role in strengthening national sustainable development priorities in India. Hence, to realize the dimensions of sustainable development in a more meaningful way, sustainability needs to be prioritized in an agrarian economy. Sustainability is a complex phenomenon encompassing economic, ecological and equity dimensions. A modest attempt in this regard has been made to estimate normative sustainable indicators for Karnataka state considering 20 crucial indicators or variables governing different dimensions. Using principal component analysis and linear scoring techniques, a minimum dataset including forest cover, livestock and human population density, and cropping intensity governing ecological issues, groundwater availability and milk availability governing social equity issues, and net cropped area, land productivity, labor productivity, food grain productivity and fertilizer use governing economic efficiency was identified, constituting crucial indicators for the development of the sustainable livelihood security index. The computed index was used to classify districts in Karnataka into various sustainable categories. Among 27 districts, 13 districts were grouped as less sustainable, 4 as highly sustainable and 10 as moderately sustainable categories. This classification and knowledge provide clues for policy makers to transform less sustainable districts into moderately/highly sustainable ones by formulating suitable policies related to crucial factors. Formulated policies on crucial factors have a domino effect/causation effect and bring about desirable changes in all other indicator variables, leading to the sustainable development of the target districts in Karnataka. This approach can be used at different scales in other states in India and in other developing countries.

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To understand the spatio-temporal dynamics and the effect of climate on fruit rot occurrence in arecanut plantations, we evaluated the intensity of fruit rot in three major growing regions of Karnataka, India for two consecutive years (2018 and 2019). A total of 27 sampling sites from the selected regions were monitored and the percentage disease intensity (PDI) was assessed on 50 randomly selected palms. Spatial interpolation technique, ordinary kriging (OK) was employed to predict the disease occurrence at unsampled locations. OK resulted in aggregated spatial maps, where the disease intensity was substantial (40.25–72.45%) at sampling sites of the Malnad and coastal regions. Further, Moran’s I spatial autocorrelation test confirmed the presence of significant spatial clusters (p ≤ 0.01) across the regions studied. Temporal analysis indicated the initiation of disease on different weeks dependent on the sampling sites and evaluated years with significant variation in PDI, which ranged from 9.25% to 72.45%. The occurrence of disease over time revealed that the epidemic was initiated early in the season (July) at the Malnad and coastal regions in contrary to the Maidan region where the occurrence was delayed up to the end of the season (September). Correlations between environmental variables and PDI revealed that, the estimated temperature (T), relative humidity (RH) and total rainfall (TRF) significantly positively associated (p = 0.01) with disease occurrence. Regression model analysis revealed that the association between Tmax, RH1 and TRF with PDI statistically significant and the coefficients for the predictors Tmax, RH1 and TRF are 1.731, 1.330 and 0.541, respectively. The information generated in the present study will provide a scientific decision support system, to generate forecasting models and a better surveillance system to develop adequate strategies to curtail the fruit rot of arecanut.

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