Ratan Tata Trust to upscale Green Revolution

{image-tata 6bc679680a0776232_11042008.jpg news.oneindia.in}Ludhiana, Apr 11: Sir Ratan Tata Trust (SRTT) plans to upscale the level of funding individual projects of the Reviving Green Revolution (RGR) Cell, in view of encouraging results of its collaboration with the Punjab Agricultural University (PAU). The RGR Cell of SRTT has been established at PAU as part of the efforts towards reviving green revolution and the SRTT has taken the issues of stagnating agriculture, increasing poverty in terms of extreme indebtedness of farmers in Punjab, a PAU release said here.

The RGR Cell also plans to collaborate with other organisations like Punjab State Farmers Commission, NGOs, cooperative societies, and private sector to attract more financial support for this new model of generation and transfer of technology, the release said. The SRTT has been providing funds since 2002 to PAU and Department of Agriculture to develop and popularise the adoption of viable agro-technologies that can reverse the direction of decreasing farm productivity and economic returns from agriculture.

Recently, a number of competent advisors, consultants and field officers have been contracted to implement the programme of the Trust, which would focus on prioritized areas of funding PAU for the development of mega demonstration of viable technologies that can be further upscaled by the Department of Agriculture, Punjab.

The Cell would serve as an idea incubator based on research emanating from laboratories and fields. It has already demonstrated economics of summer groundnut variety, SG-99 and largescale impact of integrated pest management (IPM) technology in cotton. The experts of the Trust have selected 225 villages along with one scout for each of these villages to implement the programme in the coming Kharif season.

The Trust has awarded a special project to PAU to adopt eight villages to practically demonstrate that mealy bug on cotton can be controlled by
careful adoption of already recommended technology by PAU. It has been planned to grow SG-99 variety of groundnut on 1500 acres in Mansa,
Barnala, Sangrur and Hoshiarpur districts. The Trust would provide seed at subsidised rates, money for seed treatment and would employ village
youth as scouts to educate farmers in this regard. The Basmati rice shall be cultivated on 3000 acres in villages in Amritsar, Tarn Taran and Gurdaspur districts.

The research through PAU is being supported for development of IPM in rice, maize and vegetable crops and crop residue management, popularization of groundnut, moong and gram as economically viable alternatives to rice-wheat cropping system.

The Trust has also identified education, rural livelihood and communities, arts and culture, health and enhancing civil society and governance initiatives as thematic areas to collaborate with PAU.

UNI