The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Coimbatore News : Hybrid varieties, new implements highlight of TNAU exhibition

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jun 06, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore

Hybrid varieties, new implements highlight of TNAU exhibition

By Our Staff Reporter

COIMBATORE, JUNE 5. Hybrid fruits, labour-saving agricultural implements and a pilot plant for generating alternative fuel, caught the attention of visitors who thronged an agricultural exhibition inaugurated in the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, here today.

Organised as part of a three-day Statewide Farmers' Day celebrations, the exhibition will be open to the public from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., till June 7. Admission is free. Agricultural Minister and Pro-Chancellor of the university, P. Annavi, inaugurated the exhibition.

A variety of jams, juices, jellies and pickles on display demonstrated how it was possible for farmers to put into practice, simple techniques to add value to farm produce, and extend the shelf life of common fruits and vegetables. The university is keen on promoting commercial agriculture, to boost farm income and enable cultivators break into the export market.

Parked on one side of the exhibition stalls was a farm tractor, which used bio-diesel as fuel. To meet the fuel shortages, scientists have intensified efforts to identify trees such as `jatropha', which yield bio-fuel. Standardising the techniques for growing such trees and extracting oil from them, is receiving top priority.

Among other farm implements that the university has developed this year are an improved turmeric boiler, a hand-operated thresher for pepper, a banana clump remover, a cotton stalk-puller, an oil palm harvesting tool, a groundnut harvester operated by a power tiller, and an instrument to remove groundnut shells.

To mark the Farmers' Day celebrations, the university has introduced new varieties of cumbu, ragi, red gram, fodder cowpea, cotton, sugar cane, betel vine, Ooty Rosemary and oyster mushroom.

Many visitors evinced interest in botanical insecticides, polyethylene film mulch for groundnut grown under irrigated conditions, use of green manure in direct seeded rice, vermi biocompost and a trap for the pulse beetle.

About 60 exhibitors had put up their stalls. In keeping with the close links that the university is seeking to develop with agricultural industries in the private sector, some of the stalls had been allotted to companies marketing a range of farm implements and products, from pumps to fences.

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