The Honorable Shri Narendra Singh Tomar, Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Government of India launched the integration of ICAR-IIHR Seed Portal with YONO Krishi web application of State Bank of India on 26.08.2020 at Krishi Bhawan, New Delhi. The Honorable Minister emphasized that the horticulture production contributes more than 32% of the agriculture production and there is need to further increase this. For achieving this, technologies for digitizing agriculture has important role to play in boosting production and productivity, availability of quality inputs and increasing the farmers income. He also mentioned that digitization is to be carried out in all the sectors of agriculture, as it is a dream of Hon'ble Prime Minister for faster and easy access of agricultural inputs, bringing transparency in dealings, avoiding cooruption and doubling of farmer’s income. He further said that State Bank of India is playing a very important role in implementing various schemes of Government of India, like Jan Dhan Yojana, Pradhan Mantri Kisan Yojana etc. and, also in providing monetary benefits to the farmers during the COVID-19 pandemic. He said that the integration of ICAR-IIHR Seed Portal with SBI Yono Krishi web application will help farmers immensely in increasing the crop production and crop quality, and income generation. He hoped that more and more farmers would join this portal in future for getting benefit of certified seeds being made available by the institute. He appreciated the efforts of the staff of SBI and ICAR-Indian Institute of Horticultural Research for carrying out this integration, and congratulated them with hope that it would benefit farming communities more and more.
The program was presided over by Dr. Trilochan Mohapatra, Secretary, DARE and Director General, Indian Council of Agricultural Research, New Delhi. In his presidential address, he said that ICAR is giving due emphasis to the Govt of India Digital India initiative. He said that ICAR-IIHR has developed good number of technologies which are benefitting farmers immensely, and the integration of SBI Yono Krishi digital platform with ICAR-IIHR Seed Portal is a good effort in this direction, which will help farmers to get quality seeds directly at their residence itself at cheaper rate.
The guest of honour of the function, Mr. Rajnish Kumar, Chairman, State Bank of India, said that digitization has a major role to play in doubling the farmer’s income, and for this SBI Yono Krishi is making a good contribution for the support of farmers through various SBI financial schemes. He explained the features of YONO Krishi, and narrated its functionality and benefits and hoped that the integration of YONO Krishi with ICAR-IIHR Seed Portal would go long way in helping farmers to ensure the easy availability of certified quality seeds at good price to large farmer base of India.
Dr. M.R. Dinesh, Director, ICAR-IIHR, Bengaluru welcomed the Hon’ble Minister and other dignitaries, and told the audience that the institute is producing quality seeds of several high yielding and disease-free varieties of different horticultural crops developed by the institute, with a production outlay of 20 tonnes seeds per year. He said that institute has plans to increase it to 50 tonnes in the coming years. Besides, he told that the institute has developed rootstock technology in vegetable crops like tomato and chilli in combating the effects of biotic and abiotic stresses, and several value added products through the intervention of postharvest technology. He further told that more than 300 companies are getting benefits out of the institute technologies
Dr. A.K. Singh, DDG (Horticultural Science), ICAR, New Delhi proposed the vote of thanks.
All senior officials of ICAR, VCs of horticultural universities, director’s of ICAR institutes and ATARI, horti-entrepreneurs, scientists of institute and farmers also participated the programme virtually.
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