State seed farms situated at Pongalur and Pappankulam in the district are getting a facelift at an outlay of Rs. 42.85 lakh, obtained from the corpus created by the Union Government under the ‘Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana’.
A major chunk of the total outlay, to the tune of Rs. 25 lakh, has been earmarked for the creation of the seed processing unit at Pongalur farm and the remaining to set up fencing along the circumference of the two seed farms to prevent stray animals from destroying the crops raised to produce the requisite seeds as well as for security purposes.
“The seed processing unit to be commissioned shortly will be having a facility to clean and process the seeds obtained from the seed farm premises as well as from outside before they were sent for quality testing and certification,” Joint Director of Agriculture Mohammed Kalimullah Sherif said.
The unit would be embedded with a yard to store seeds, processing and seed treatment gadgets, moisture analyser, sieves and packaging machines.
Mr. Sherif said that the seed farm at Pongalur, which was reactivated in the recent times after lying defunct, had registered operating profits after a gap of 15 years through the production and sale of hybrid seeds.
“This farm will be used this fiscal mainly to produce high quality seeds of maize and cholam even though the last fiscal there has been some other crops too been raised for seed production,” Mr. Sherif added.
