IVVEG-21: Int’l Conference on Vegetable Research & Innovations for Nutrition, Entrepreneurship & Environment Starts

Indian Society of Vegetable Science is organizing International Conference on Vegetable Research & Innovations for Nutrition, Entrepreneurship, and Environment from December 14-16, 2021 to bring international communities together to discuss recent advances and prospects of vegetables.

Dr. T. K. Behera, Director of ICAR-Indian Institute of Vegetable Research, (Varanasi) welcomed Chief Patron Dr. T Mohapatra, Secretary (DARE) & DG (ICAR), New Delhi, and Patron Dr. AK Singh, DDG (Horticultural Science). He then gave a welcome message to the delegates and started the conference.

Major Objectives of Conference:

• Provide a platform for researchers and developmental partners to exchange innovations for sustainable vegetable production, availability, affordability, and consumption.

• Foster individual and institutional linkages and bring out conference proceedings outlining environmentally sustainable vegetable production and value chain.

Themes of Conference:

In the technical session of each theme, there’ll be 2-3 invited presentations by recognized experts. Various themes of this conference are as follows:

1. Untapped Vegetable Diversity and Improvement:

Characterizing and improving indigenous vegetables for nutraceuticals, genetic improvements of vegetable crops using genomic and post-genomic tools including CRISPR-Cas based genome editing, De novo domestication, gene bank-scale genomics, multi-omics, and climate-smart traits for environmentally sustainable intensification, biofortification and varieties with novel traits.

2. Production system and Climate-Smart Agriculture:

Integrated vegetable production systems, vegetables in agroforestry and homestead state in rural, peri-urban, and urban landscapes, vertical farming, mechanization, and automation in vegetable production, vegetable for climate change adaptation (crop diversification) and mitigation, carbon credits and water productivity, precision farming and decision support system.

3. Plant Health Management:

Policy and regulations for safer vegetable production, research on environmental pollution including heavy metals and residual toxicity, pest forecasting, pest detection, diagnostics & management, ecological engineering, digital pest maps, pesticide residue, biosafety, and biosecurity, and developing bio-intensive pest management modules.

4. Healthy Food and Diet diversification with vegetables:

Drivers of food choices in the context of major crops, exploitation of underutilized vegetables, vegetables for vulnerable communities during natural disasters, pregnant women, and diets in school and hospital feeding programs, Nutri and kitchen garden.

5. Vegetables Post-Harvest and Value Chain:

Regulations and/or safety needs for processing and value addition, on-farm packaging and post-harvest operations, manufacturing of vegetable-based ready-to-eat snacks (pasta, noodles, macroni), marketing of nutrient-rich and health safer products, use of vegetable food waste, context-specific research on vegetable supply chains, startups, FPOS, ODOPete.

6. Entrepreneurship and Education:

Public-Private Partnerships for increasing farm productivity and income, crop calendars, and production planning, scaled and scalable technologies, contract organic vegetable production, vegetable seed systems, seed industry and employment, inclusive vegetable science educational systems for empowering a new generation of vibrant critical masses and leaderships.