The ICAR (Indian Council of Agricultural Research) is an autonomous apex body responsible for coordinating agricultural education and research in India whose headquarters is at New Delhi under the ministry of Agriculture and Farmers welfare.
Indian economy is worst hit by COVID-19 pandemic. It was the time for all the farmers to indulge in harvesting of many Rabi season crops like wheat, mustard, chickpea and it was also time for marketing and storage also to get their efforts fruitful. But, entire nation was in lockdown where transportation, marketing facilities were supposed to be shutdown for quite duration of time. In this critical time ICAR took many demand driven and location specific initiatives and innovations in different fields.
In order to support all the farmers, KVK's (Krishi Vigyan Kendra's) worked full stretch to disseminate information through ICT in order to overcome problems faced by our farming community.
Some of the ICAR's innovation during COVID-19 are here:-
1. Use of ICT tools to facilitate bee keepers in lockdown period
2. KVK's ensured supply of quality paddy seeds during lockdown
3.Pest management with neem based formulations due to unavailability of chemical pesticides.
4. Popularising nutritional gardening in backward locality
5.Managing Fall army worm infestation in summer maize
6. KVK's facilitates migration of bee- colonies to distress beehives and keepers
7.Use of human medicine for treatment of poultry enteritis
8.Production of Azolla as food supplement during distress
9. Promoting silage making in polybags
10. Sabji Apke Dwar: linking vegetable growers to veg fed
And many other solutions are provided by ICAR to safeguard interests of farmer.
Author
Meghana D P, MSc student scholar in Agriculture, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, Punjab.