Union Minister of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry & Dairying, Giriraj Singh visited the ICAR-Directorate of Poultry Research in Hyderabad. During his visit, the Minister urged scientists to be result-oriented and work for catering to the needs of farmers & entrepreneurs. He stressed upon the need for developing suitable models incorporating measures for minimizing feed cost, like vermi-composting and Moringa cultivation for efficient rearing of low input birds. This would help in achieving the target of doubling farmers’ income.
During his interaction with the Tribal and Scheduled Caste Farmer beneficiaries, the Minister distributed Kadaknath and Improved Aseel chickens along with other necessary inputs under the Scheduled Caste Sub Plan and Tribal Sub Plan. He urged the farmers for rearing more number of low input birds under the cluster mode with the involvement of entrepreneur at the village level.
Singh laid the Foundation Stone for Committee Hall. He also visited the hatchery, pure line and native breed farm, poultry waste management unit and Moringa cultivation farm and reviewed the progress.
Dr. Joykrushna Jena, Deputy Director General (Fisheries and Animal Sciences), ICAR highlighted the role being played by the rural chicken varieties developed by ICAR-DPR in achieving the target of doubling the farmers’ income. He also underlined about the initiation of the GWAS and SNP Chip Development by the Institute in collaboration with ILRI.
Earlier, Dr. R.N. Chatterjee, Director, ICAR-DPR appraised the Minister about the ICAR-DPR’s contribution along with Centres of AICRP on Poultry Breeding and Poultry Seed Project in the development of chicken varieties by utilizing the local germplasm for the upliftment of the economy of the rural marginal farmers through rearing of these chicken varieties.
The various Officials of ICAR Institutes located at Hyderabad, State Animal Husbandry Department, PVNRT Veterinary University, NFDB and CPWD participated in the event.
