Bhubaneswar: Availability of quality seeds and planting material is a prerequisite for conventional and commercial vegetable farming. However, farmers are yet not completely aware of the benefits of these modern varieties.
Needless to say, there is a need to reorient the supply of these seeds through a system at the grass root level by involving vegetable growers, rural unemployed youth and farm women to channelise their ambitions to become seed producers under the seed village concept. Keeping that in mind, Central Horticultural Experiment Station (ICAR-IIHR), Bhubaneswar, under the MIDH sponsored project, SEEDS: Social and Economic Empowerment through Dedicated Seed production clusters for vegetable crops in Odisha, organised a workshop Thursday at IMAGE, Siripur, Bhubaneswar.
The primarily objective of the workshop was to identify potential areas and farmer beneficiaries for commercial seed production of vegetables. The workshop was inaugurated by Dr BK Upadhyay, Director, Horticulture, Directorate of Horticulture, Govt of Odisha in the presence of Dr PK Roul, Dean, Extension Education, OUAT, Bhubaneswar, Dr MR Dinesh, Director, ICAR-Indian Institute of Horticultural Research, Bengaluru, Dr GC Acharya, Head, CHES and Dr P Srinivas, Principal Scientist and Principal investigator of the project.
Speaking on the occasion Upadhyay, said that the project was sanctioned keeping in mind the state lack of self sufficiency in producing quality vegetable seeds. Upadhay is confident that the project will be a great success and help farmers in the long run.
Roul said that the project is aimed at social and economic empowerment of the farming community. Dr MR Dinesh encouraged and appealed the farmers of Odisha to take up commercial seed production of important crops. He also shared the success stories of seed production efforts taken by ICAR-IIHR in Karnataka.
