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ICAR-IIHR now on aggressive drive for entrepreneurship in horticulture
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Tuesday, 21 July, 2020, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Nandita Vijay, Bengaluru
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ICAR-Indian Institute of Horticultural Research (IIHR) is now on an aggressive drive to woo entrepreneurship in horticulture. The institute, which has come out with various technologies and varieties, is now looking at tech transfer. These are in the areas of nursery development, seed production as an enterprise, eco-friendly horticulture technologies available for commercialisation, micronutrient formulations for fruit and vegetable crops and subsidiary farm enterprises among others.
“We have developed 301 varieties/hybrids and 152 technologies for different stakeholders. In this juncture there is a vast scope for entrepreneurship through horticulture. We providing licences to the manufacturers who in turn become successful entrepreneur,” said Dr M R Dinesh, Director, ICAR-IIHR.
There are several opportunities in horticulture. In the area of nursery development as an enterprise various fruit, vegetable and ornamental crops to cater to the needs of farming community. Among the fruit crops, we are providing technologies to produce Arka Kiran and Arka Rashmi in guava, Arka Udaya and Arka Suprabhath in mango; Arka Bangara, Arka Bangara-2 and Arka Agni in marigold, Arka Prajwal in tuberose are the important ones apart from other varieties. Buy back for the planting material is also there from ICAR IIHR, according to him.
In vegetable crops, seed production in tomato: Arka Rakshak India’s first triple disease resistant tomato hybrid and other tomato hybrids; hybrids of chilli, varieties of dolichos, ridge gourd and french beans; among the ornamentals tuberose and marigold, in medicinal crops varieties of mucuna and ashwagandha, in fruit crops papaya varieties Arka Prabhath and Arka Surya are available for seed production.
Seed production through farmers has helped the institute to produce 18 tonne of vegetable seeds. A vegetable growing farmer can become a successful entrepreneur through seed production.
The Arka Microbial Consortium is a carrier liquid based product that contains efficient strains of nitrogen fixing Azotobacter, Phosphorus and Zinc solubilising, Potassium mobilising and plant growth promoting bacterial strains.
“This AMC technology has been licensed to 22 entrepreneurs/government agencies, which have a combined production capacity of 1,000 tonne per annum that is sufficient to cover two lakh acre of land. It has been estimated that the technology has spread to over 46,000 acre of land in different states of the country and has resulted in an annual economic benefit of Rs138 crore for the country,” said Dr Dinesh.
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