NALBARI, Oct 18 - A group of scientists of APART project from the Assam Agricultural University (AAU), Jorhat along with APART personnel deputed at KVK Nalbari visited several paddy fields in Nalbari district and the custom hiring centre established at Bongaon village on Thursday.
The expert team also interacted with the farmers and officials of the custom hiring centre to get feedback. This year, nearly 1300 bighas of land were brought under cultivation of the submergence-tolerant rice varieties like Ranjit Sub-1, Bahadur Sub-1, Swarna Sub-1 and Bina Dhan-11 covering 500 farmers of the district. These varieties are capable of remaining submerged in water upto a period of 15 days without any ill-effect on the yield.
After visiting the fields, the Nodal Officer Dr Rupam Borgohain OPIU, APART under AAU Jorhat and Bhaskar Mahanta, Programme Coordinator urged the farmers to popularise these rice varieties, especially in flood-prone areas of the district in the coming years.
On their visit to the custom hiring centre of Bongaon, the team members inspected the machinery present there. Dr Borgohain said that in the present agricultural scenario, farm mechanisation is very crucial to save time and reduce costs of production besides completing the farming activities on time. He also said that farm mechanisation can also be a source of employment generation for educated young farmers. He assured that many newly-developed farm machinery will be provided to the custom hiring centre so that in can be upgraded to Farm Producer Company (FPC).
The team members were also accompanied by Homeswar Mazumdar, SMS, Horticulture KVK Nalbari, Antara Kakoty, ADO, Chamata circle and Dipankar Kalita, Project Associate.
