Kailash Choudhary to Inaugurate 1st Global Okra Round Table Conference on October 10

With the grateful support of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), ATPBR is organizing the first Global Okra Round Table conference (GORT-1) on October 10, 2022, 12 o'clock, at the ICAR-IARI campus at Pusa in New Delhi.

Kailash Choudhary, Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare to inaugurate the first Global Okra Round Table conference (GORT-1).

Over the last five years, okra has become India's most valuable vegetable crop, generating seed revenue of over 850 crores on 500,000 hectares annually. The "GORT-1" aims to bring together all okra crop improvement scientists and other stakeholders on the same campus where the okra virus (YVMV) resistance breeding began with the release of the okra variety PusaSawani by Late Dr. Harbhajan Singh.

Following that were the path-breaking releases of several virus-resistant varieties, like Arka Anamika at ICAR-IIHR, Bangalore and Prabhani Kranti from Vasantrao Naik Marathwada Krishi Vidyapeeth, Maharashtra.

Resistance from these varieties was soon used by scientists from CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar, ICAR-IARI, New Delhi, ICAR-IIVR, Varanasi and PAU, Ludhiana.

The Private Seed sector followed these with hybrids from 1990 and significant work has led to them releasing the short inter-noded hybrids with very high tolerance to both viruses (YVMV and ELCV) that are important today, the hybrid Radhika from Advanta being the leader today.

The conference will bring the top scientists working on this crop in India, Nigeria, Sudan, South Africa, Egypt, and Taiwan together, and they will deliberate on the way forward for its improvement for better disease resistance, better nutritional quality, and higher abiotic resistance. It is planned to honour the scientists who made this journey possible.

GORT will have a biennial meeting in the future to take the crops’ improvement forward. A total of 150 delegates, including scientists, students, industry representatives and farmers’ are physically attending this conference.