Concern over plant diseases in potato and tomato the Agriculture department has urged the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) to find effective ways to address the problem faced by farmers of the state.
Director of Agriculture, JC Lyngdoh who attended an interface meet organised by ICAR yesterday, highlighted the problems faced by farmers in harvesting potato and was hopeful that the engineering division of the institute will soon come up with a tool for harvesting of potato, which will reduce drudgery among the farmers.
She suggested for collaboration between ICAR and the department to reshape the farming system of the state that will bring about an overall growth of the farming community.
The interface meet which was held at the Meghalaya Agriculture & Management Extension Training Institute (MAMETI) in Upper Shillong, was organised with the district level agriculture and horticulture officers and attended by Joint Director Research and Training, W. Syiemlieh and Dr B.P. Singh Head of the Division Technology Assessment and Capacity Building of ICAR and a team of scientists.
Syiemlieh agreed on the collaboration between the two machineries for the welfare of farmers and said that the department can take the research output to the farmers and provide feedback to the scientist which would in turn help them in the field of research.
Singh gave a brief presentation on the aims of the meet. He said that the district level officers who have ground level contact with the farmers will help research to percolate to the field.
Scientist from different divisions of ICAR which include Dr V. K. Verma (Horticulture), Dr Amit Kumar (Plant Breeding), Dr Debasish Chakraborty (Agro-metrology), Dr Badapmain M (Agronomy), H. Jiten Singh (Agriculture Engineering) and Dr Raju Singh (Agroforestry) presented the areas where collaboration between both departments can be achieved.
An extensive discussion was held on various problems faced in the field by the state government officers and solutions to the problems were discussed at the meet.