GUWAHATI, Feb 11 � A new variety of dual purpose chicken �Kamrupa� was today released in a meeting held under the chairmanship of the Vice Chancellor of Assam Agricultural University, Dr KM Bujarbaruah, at the conference hall of College of Veterinary Science, Khanapara here, official sources said.
Delivering his inaugural speech, the Director of Research(Veterinary) Dr A Chakrabarty expected that the farmers of Assam would accept the new variety.
In his descriptive speech on �Kamrupa�, Dr Niranjan Kalita, Principal Investigator and Head of the Department (Poultry Science), said that �Kamrupa� is a locally developed chicken variety. The speciality of this chicken variety, developed after continuous research work of five years, is that it has better production performance capacity in terms of both meat and egg compared to local variety. It attains 1.5 � 1.8 kg body weight at 20 weeks of age and can produce 120 � 140 eggs per year. The size of the egg is bigger and is of brown colour. Moreover, it is suitable for backyard poultry farming.
Dr RN Goswami, the Dean, College of Veterinary Science in his speech expected that the rural farmers would be benefitted through rearing of �Kamrupa�.
The Director of Poultry Research, Hyderabad, Dr RN Chatterjee, appreciated the Principal Investigator and all others involved in developing the first location specific chicken variety.
The Deputy Director General (Animal Science) of Indian Council of Agricultural Research distributed �Kamrupa� to twenty poultry farmers free of cost.
In his presidential speech, Vice Chancellor Dr Bujarbaruah said that �Kamrupa� is the first locally developed chicken variety of its kind in the entire North East India and has initiated a new glorious era in poultry history.
The meeting ended with vote of thanks by Dr BK Sarmah, DDR(vety), AAU, Khanapara, the sources added.
