Artificial rain experiment will be conducted in the arid Solapur district in the next two weeks under a Ministry of Earth Sciences project, an Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology official said yesterday. A special aeroplane will seed dark clouds with sodium chloride or calcium chloride.

To verify the actual rainfall precipitation, there have been 120 rain gauges put up in the periphery of 200 km around Solapur, an official of the Pune-based institute said. "It is a part of an ongoing project of the Ministry of Earth Sciences, which had earlier collected data and come up with the artificial rainfall project," he added.