Artificial insemination (AI) is a simple technique which is well adapted in dairy cattle and buffalo breeding. Its contribution in helping India achieve, the highest milk production of the world, cannot be ignored. The Bengal goat breed is known for its meat quality, adaptability and prolificacy. For the farmers in West Bengal, Odisha, Bihar and adjoining states, it is the breed of choice. There is a scarcity in the availability of quality breeding bucks due to early castration and slaughter of male goats for meat purpose. As goats are mostly reared by small, marginal and landless farmers, with flock size of 3- 5 goats, it is economically unviable to keep a breeding buck for a small flock. Thus the females are bred by nondescript males’ resulting in loss of precious germplasm of the region. To prevent the dilution of valuable germplasm by indiscriminate mating and to preserve its purity and propagate this unique germplasm, Eastern Regional station of ICAR-National...

Mushroom, a wonderful human diet for all age group people because of its nutritional and medicinal properties. Nagaland has great scope of commercial mushroom cultivation by recycling paddy waste for higher income generation.     Shri Rajib Mondal of Dimapur started mushroom cultivation by understanding the scope and opportunities. He became a spawn and mushroom producing entrepreneur in Nagaland with the help of ICAR Nagaland Centre. He also established a low cost mushroom cultivation unit and started producing mushroom spawn to mitigate the problem of spawn availability in Nagaland.    He used bajra and wheat as a substrate instead of paddy straw to reduce time period for spawn preparation as well as mushroom production for higher profit. During the season, around 650-700 spawn packets (200 g/packet) per month were produced. Out of which, around 300-400 packets of spawn/ month were sold to farmers of Nagaland fetching Rs 8, 750.00.  He...

The Indian Council of Agricultural Research launched Mera Gaon Mera Gaurav programme to promote direct interface of scientists with the farmers to accelerate the transfer of information from lab to land. The objective is to provide farmers with required information, knowledge and advisories on regular basis on region-specific farming.  A team of scientists from ICAR-Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Kochi, reached out to an upstart agrarian couple Smt Hema Vijayakumar and Shri Vijayakumar of Pazhoor, Piravom, Kerala.   In an area of around 2347.26 sq. m with laterite soil they started integrated organic farming of vegetables along with ornamental plants, variety of trees, medicinal plants, cash crops, poultry, cattle rearing and aquaculture. The challenge was to convert the hilly area with laterite soil, which is more apt for rubber plantation, to a fertile productive land suitable for integrated farming with horticultural plants. It became more...

Protected cultivation practices are gaining momentum in Madhya Pradesh due to combined efforts of Government of India, Madhya Pradesh State Horticulture Mission and Precision Farming Development Centre (PFDC) established at ICAR-Central Institute of Agricultural Engineering, Bhopal. The area under drip irrigation has increased from about 90,000 ha in 2012-13 to over 2, 50,000 ha in 2017-18., similarly the total area under shadenet house and polyhouses increased from 26.0 ha to over 300 ha during this period.   The staff of PFDC provides technical support to the state government in advocating these practices amongst the farming communities. The regular training programmes organized on drip irrigation, plastic mulching technology and covered cultivation by the PFDC helped over 100 farmers of Madhya Pradesh state to establish drip irrigation, plastic mulching, shadenet houses, polyhouses etc for enhancing their income over traditional farming practices. Farmers...

The Gosaba Island of Indian Sunderbans is surrounded by tidal rivers connected with Bay of Bengal, bringing water of high salinity (more than 30 dS/m), which is not suitable for irrigation in agriculture. Good quality ground water is also unavailable for irrigation due to various technical reasons. Due to these farmers in this village are unable to grow rabi crops. Farm ponds which harvest the rain water during monsoon are the only source of water for irrigation in the post monsoon period. To increase the cropped area, solar powered drip irrigation technology has been introduced in the Island under the CSI4CZ project. Analysis of monthly weather data available at Canning Town shows that the average bright sunshine hours (BSH) during the rabi season is 7 – 9 hrs a day, which is sufficient to harness the solar energy for use in agriculture. Under this technology solar panels were installed near the pond and a nano pump (0.1 hp) was used for lifting water from the farm pond to a tank (...