Day three had the sessions for Zone-IV (Bihar & Jharkhand), Zone-V (West Bengal, Odisha and Andaman & Nicobar Islands) and Zone-VI (Assam, Arunachal Pradesh & Sikkim). During the session, Shri. R. Shankar, Minister of Horticulture, Government of Karnataka in the presence of Shri. Rajendra Kumar Kataria, Principal Secretary, Department of Horticulture and Ms. Fouzia Taranum, director of Horticulture graced their presence. The dignitaries also visited the NHF demo plots and appreciated ICAR-IIHR efforts.
The three MoUs signed by ICAR-IIHR were handed over to the entrepreneurs by the dignitaries. In this session, two progressive farmers from Assam Shri. Lakhindra Gohain and Shri. Sanjib Goswami were bestowed with Best Farmer Awards for using the ICAR-IIHR technologies.
All the sessions had the discussion on various problems related to horticultural crops and mushroom and the specialists from ICAR institutes directly responded to the questions shared by various KVKs. Arrangements were made by the respective ICAR-ATARI zones, ICAR Institutes, SAUs and KVKs to connect the farmers virtually for getting the benefit of the discussions. Each session had participation of about 200 virtual logins from each of the zones representing more than 50,000 participants.
