Central Horticultural Experiment Station (ICAR-IIHR), Bhubaneswar organized trainings on commercial horticulture and field exposure visits for the farmers of different districts of Odisha to showcase promising horticultural technologies during their participation in National Horticulture Fair, 2021, in virtual mode and through field visits to demonstration and experimental plots at the Station.
On 10th Feb. more than 200 farmers from Nabrangpur, Khordha, Nayagarh, Boudh, Bolangir, Cuttack and Puri districts participated in the virtual meet organized for Zone 5 meant for Odisha, West Bengal and Andaman & Nicobar Islands. The program was graced by the Sri Digambar Panda, Additional Director, Directorate of Horticulture, Sh. P. Rout, Additional DCP, Bhubaneswar and Sh. Sudhakar Sahoo, Deputy Director Horticulture. Dr. G. C. Acharya, Head, CHES(ICAR-IIHR, Bhubaneswar welcomed the guests and participants and gave a brief account of the National Horticulture Fair 2021 and highlighted the farmer-centric programs of NHF organized at ICAR-IIHR, Bengaluru. He hailed the historic effort taken by ICAR-IIHR for taking the horticultural technologies to the farmers across the country through virtual platform.
Sh Panda told that participation of farmers from various districts of Odisha at CHES(ICAR-IIHR), Bhubaneswar and virtual participation of farmers and other stakeholders through KVKs, FPOs and other agencies in National Horticulture Fair 2021 will have great impact in the dissemination of horticultural technologies in the state. Sh. Rout congratulated ICAR-IIHR, Bengaluru and CHES, Bhubaneswar for organizing a grand event including scientist-farmers interaction sessions wherein the stakeholders would get a chance to get the detailed guidance from an expert directly facilitating effective flow of technology among the farming community. Sri Sudhakar Sahoo, Deputy Director Horticulture, lauded the close cooperation and linkages between the State Horticulture department and CHES (ICAR-IIHR), Bhubaneswar through various schemes and projects operational for different programme in the State. He also acknowledged the regular technical support provided by the Station for various activities of the Directorate of Horticulture. Dr. P. Srinivas, Principal Scientist and In charge of Transfer of technologies at CHES(ICAR-IIHR), informed the audience that the ICAR-IIHR technologies including CHES technologies are being showcased on 9th and 10th February through videos and participants joined directly with ICAR-IIHR live streaming. The vote of thanks was proposed by Dr. Kundan Kishor, Principal Scientist (Fruit science) at the Station, who thanked the farmers who had come to CHES (ICAR-IIHR), Bhubaneswar from different district of Odisha through the support of State Horticulture Department, RKVT-S&T Project for Nabarangpur, MIDH-SEEDs project and other agencies.
The audience was directly linked with the proceedings of the live streaming at ICAR-IIHR, Bengaluru where in various technologies of ICAR-IIHR and other horticulture based institutes across India were explained in Odia, Bengali and Hindi languages. Visuals of various technologies of fruits, vegetables, flowers, plant protection, post-harvest processing, etc, along with procedural and technological details in bilingual format were displayed. Videos on success stories were also shown to the participants. Field exposure visits were organized for the participating farmers. Teams of Scientist, technicians and volunteers guided the farmers groups through the demonstration and experimental fields of CHES (ICAR-IIHR), Bhubaneswar. The farmers were educated about promising varieties of fruits and vegetables, crop cafeteria, fruit-based intercropping system, dragon fruit cultivation, canopy management, vegetable grafting, performance of ARKA varieties, genetic diversity in leafy vegetable, beans, mango, underutilized fruit crops, plant protection measures, organic unit and ethylene gas-induced fruit ripening were demonstrated to participants. The farmers also visited the exhibition arranged to display the achievements, technologies and activities of Govt. of Odisha funded projects like RKVY-Post harvest, RKVY- S&T, MIDH-SEEDs, RKVY-Virus indexing, Tribal Sub Plan, MIDH-Pine apple, etc operational at the Station.
A Scientists and farmers interaction Session was arranged to address the queries of the participating farmers and other stakeholders. The program ended with the vote of thanks.
The COVID norms were followed during the program.
