‘Double paddy, triple millets production’

The Tamil Nadu Government has asked agriculture scientists and extension officers to double paddy production and triple millets production.

Speaking at the 81{+s}{+t}Scientific Workers Conference 2015 held at the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University on Friday, Agriculture Production Commissioner and Secretary, Agriculture, Rajesh Lakhoni, said that in the next five years, the scientists and farmers should work together to ensure that they achieved the target by 2020.

This was the first of the three mandates he was giving them, he said.

The second was that scientists should identify the top three diseases in each of the crops and work on developing disease-resistant varieties of those crops.

Pest management

The third was that the scientists and extension officers should develop and propagate crop-specific integrated pest management practices so that farmers saved on pesticides and thereby increased their income.

This would be in keeping with the Chief Minister’s objective of tripling farmers’ income.

Tamil Nadu Agricultural University Vice Chancellor K. Ramasamy said that the credit for Tamil Nadu registering a record food production of 128 lakh metric tonnes was due to the joint efforts of the planners, scientists and the field-level staff.

But the sad part was that the scientific and extension staff in Tamil Nadu had better recognition and appreciation outside the State.

While the University, research stations had made considerable progress in development of new crops, there was lag in pulses development.

This would be addressed soon.

He said that agriculture scientists would have done wonders if the Centre and State governments had not gradually reduced the spending on agriculture after the Third Five Year Plan.

As far as the University was concerned, from a 1,780 faculty, it had come down 1,300 while the number of colleges had increased from two to 13, number of research stations from seven to 37 and extension centres to 14.

Funding

But the funding had not correspondingly increased, Mr. Ramasamy said and sought increased funding for research and more research stations.

J. Daniel Chellappa, Senior Scientist, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, spoke on his organisations’ contribution in groundnut cultivation and shelf-life extension of a few produce.

Directors of various Horticulture, Sericulture, Agriculture Marketing and senior scientists participated in the conference.