ICAR-Vivekananda Parvatiya Krishi Anusandhan Sansthan, Almora organized two 5-day training programmes on North East Hill (NEH) region scientists of KVKs

ICAR-Vivekananda Parvatiya Krishi Anusandhan Sansthan, Almora organized two 5-day training programmes on “Improving the livelihoods of North East Hill (NEH) region farmers through suitable technological interventions” for the scientists of KVKs of north-eastern states under ATARI Zone VI (Guwahati) and ATARI Zone VII (Umiam), respectively. The first training programme organized during 22-26 January, 2024 had a total 35 participants that included 27 scientists from Assam, one from Sikkim, and 5 scientists and two ADOs from Arunachal Pradesh.  In the second training programme organized from 29 January-02 February, 18 SMSs/ACTOs/CTOs representing different KVKs of Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura participated. Addressing the participants at the inaugural session, Director, ICAR-VPKAS, Almora Dr Lakshmi Kant apprised the participant of the role being played by ICAR-VPKAS in extending suitable technologies in the NEH region and highlighted the important role of KVK scientists in the dissemination of new technologies for improving the livelihoods of farmers in the NEH region. Dr Kadrivel (Director, ATARI Zone VII) and Dr Manoranjan Niyog (Director, Extension Education, AAU, Jorhat) described the training programmes as important initiatives for building closer partnership between ICAR-VPKAS and the NEH KVKs, and urged the participating scientists to make utmost use of the opportunity keeping in view the technological needs of NEH farmers. The training programmes covered different important aspects of hill agriculture that included improved production technology of important hill crops, integrated disease and insect-pest management, protected cultivation, mushroom production technology/farmer participatory seed production, millet post-harvest processing & value addition and farm mechanization.

Special lectures by external experts on entrepreneurship & business incubation and certification of organic products were also organized. A visit of participants the institute’s adopted village Darima (Nainital) was also organized to give the participants first-hand exposure to the adoption and impact of VL technologies in the hills. During the concluding session, the feedback of the participants about the training programme was obtained and specific queries were addressed by Director, ICAR-VPKAS. Along with the certificates, the participants were provided a mini seed kit of popular VL crop varieties. On this occasion, the institute also felicitated Mr CK Singh, I/c Head & SMS (Agronomy), KVK Tawang, for his commendable role in disseminating improved finger millet variety VL Mandua 376 through large-scale demonstrations and farmer participatory seed production and introducing VL Millet Thresher-cum-Pearler in the district, which have helped farmers harvest higher yield and save time and labour in post-harvest operations. The first training programme was co-ordinated by Drs RK Khulbe, Gaurav Verma and Hitesh Bijarniya and the second training programme was coordinated by Drs Rahul Dev, Shyam Nath, Devender Sharma and MS Bhinda.