KARUR: National Agricultural Development Programme (NADP) is to be implemented in Karur district from the current year.

Proposals worth Rs. 107 crore have been forwarded for implementation in the Centrally-sponsored four-year programme that would see coordinated efforts involving several governmental agencies and departments in a bid to make the life of farmers better.

The NADP aims at increasing the funding of development programmes being implemented by the Agriculture and allied departments, empowering fully the states to prepare action plans for the betterment of farmers and agriculture in every district, preparing plans in accordance and in tune with the local ecology, meteorology and technology.

Also the programme would seek to accord priority for increasing area under local and indigenous crops, prepare plans to reduce the gap in raising staple crops and to elevate farm and allied activities to make them viable for farmers to enjoy better living conditions among other things.

Elected local body members and chiefs would be involved in drafting and discussing the action plan for each district. In fact, for discussing the proposals, a special meeting of the elected local body chiefs was convened here recently and the panchayat chiefs gave valuable inputs in tinkering with the plan to suit the local needs.

Besides Agriculture, departments such as Agriculture Engineering, Agriculture Marketing, Horticulture, Animal Husbandry, Sericulture, Seed Certification, Public Works Department’s various wings have been involved in drafting the proposals under the NADP.

The Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU), which is the coordinating agency for implementing the project has allotted one scientist for each implementing district.

While Agriculture Department has forwarded proposals worth Rs. 8.89 crore, Horticulture has come up with plans worth Rs. 1.62 crore, Agri Marketing Rs. 1.05 crore, Agri Engineering Rs. 8.34 crore, Animal Husbandry Rs. 24.86 crore, Sericulture Rs. 62 lakh, and Seed Certification has put forward proposals worth Rs. 6 lakh.

The River Conservancy Division of the Public Works Department has submitted plans estimated to cost Rs. 26.04 crore while the department’s Amaravathy Basin Division and Non-System Division have prepared projects estimated to cost Rs. 30 crore and Rs. 5.01 crore respectively. In all the departments have together sent draft plans worth Rs. 107 crore.

http://www.hindu.com/2008/05/22/stories/2008052252240300.htm

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Agriculture Department to introduce ‘organic certification’

Tuticorin: The Department of Agriculture is set to introduce ‘organic certification’ for various agriculture products in the district starting this financial year, to encourage large-scale quality organic farming.

Speaking to The Hindu, S. Arumugam, Joint Director of Agriculture, said that the organic certification would enable the farmers to sell their produces in niche market segments at attractive prices, since such documents issued by accreditation bodies would tell the consumer that the products had been grown and handled as per the organic standards set internationally.
“The importance of organic certification has been on the rise globally in the recent times, as the demand for safe, pure and healthy food is increasing considerably,” he added.

Sources said that the country was ranked 33 in terms of total land under organic cultivation and 88 in terms of the ratio of agricultural land under organic crops to total farming area during last year, leaving scope for improvement in production of organic produces.

In the district, a total of 1,250 acres is presently under organic farming.

Norms

Mr. Arumugam said that for a produce to be certified organic, the land used as medium of growth required a minimum three-year period of conversion from inorganic cultivation to organic farming methods.

Besides, the plot should have a ‘buffer zone’ of three to 10 metres around the farm boundary to avoid drifting of chemicals from the neighbours’ fields.

The farmers who plan to procure the certification should have used only ‘certified organic seeds.’

“As per norms, genetically modified seeds and use of chemical fertilizers are not allowed for organic certification,” Mr. Arumugam pointed out.

For manuring, biodegradable materials of microbial, plant or animal origins produced at organic farms can be used.
Mr. Arumugam said that all organic products should have a minimum of 95 per cent of the ingredients from certified organic origin in case multiple input constituents were used to obtain certification.

Logo

The Joint Director said that specially designed ‘Tamil Nadu Organic’ logo would be used for organic certification programme.

The registration fee for farmers or farmer units who wished to go for certification is Rs.5,000, while for corporate bodies, it will be Rs.25,000.

http://www.thehindu.com/2008/01/21/stories/2008012156740600.htm

Cornell partners with Tamil Nadu Agricultural University of India to offer innovative degree in food science

The world's food supply will be a little safer after students graduate from a dual degree program in food science now offered by Cornell University and Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) in India. Students at both institutions will study global issues related to food processing, technology, marketing and engineering.

"Global trends in the food industry demand that we train food scientists and food engineers transnationally and transculturally to ensure that food systems worldwide are sustainable, safe and nutritious," said Martin Wiedmann, associate professor of food science and director of graduate studies in food science at Cornell.

Susan A. Henry, the Ronald P. Lynch Dean of Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with C. Ramasamy, vice-chancellor of TNAU, Feb. 13, when she was in Coimbatore, India. The MoU was approved by the Cornell Faculty Senate Feb. 19. Approval by the Cornell trustees is expected in May.

"This is the first such program to be established between a land-grant university in the U.S. and an agricultural university in India," said Henry. "Faculty and students will benefit from being able to develop case studies based on the global food system that improve the relevancy and effectiveness of the teaching. Graduates will be well-equipped to address domestic and global food issues in either the private or public sector."

The program combines a Master of Professional Studies (MPS) in food science and technology from Cornell with a Master of Technology (M.Tech.) in food processing and marketing from TNAU. The MPS program will be executed under Cornell's Graduate School, which will confer the MPS degree on those who successfully meet the program's requirements according to Cornell's stipulations. The M.Tech. program will be executed under the supervision of TNAU, which will confer the M.Tech. degree on those who successfully meet program requirements according to TNAU's stipulations.

Students enrolled in the program will complete two independent applications, receive two independent offers of admission, meet two sets of program and course requirements, earn two graduate degrees and receive two diplomas.

Indian students are being recruited to start the program on Cornell's Ithaca campus in summer 2008. After six months in the United States, the Indian students will return to TNAU to finish their degrees.

Cornell and TNAU have already established a strong working relationship through joint participation in the International Agriculture and Rural Development (IARD) 602 course at Cornell.

Students pursuing the dual food science degree will be expected to participate in IARD 602's Cornell-in-India program.

Support for the new initiative draws upon the successful investment that has been made over the last three years by the Sir Ratan Tata Trust, partner universities in India and the Cornell-Sathguru Foundation, with the goal of generating internationally competent scientists and agribusiness professionals through the IARD course.

The Sir Ratan Tata Trust will help support Indian students in the dual degree program, along with additional resources from TNAU, the participating students and the Cornell-Sathguru Foundation.

Wiedmann, K.V. Raman, associate director of CALS International Programs, and Syed Rizvi, Cornell professor of food science and current Jefferson Science Fellow, will be the contacts for the dual degree program at Cornell. R. Chandra Babu, dean of postgraduate studies, will be the primary contact at TNAU.

http://seedquest.com/News/Companies/Asia/universityoftamilnadu.htm

Tamil Nadu to set up sterile poultry zone

CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu has been badly affected by the ban on poultry imports due to bird flu and plans to set up a sterile poultry zone, free from the avian virus to resume exports of poultry products from the state.

Though no cases of avian virus have been reported, Tamil Nadu’s poultry exports were badly hit by the ban after outbreak of the virus in West Bengal.

Replying to a debate on demands for grants pertaining to her ministry, state animal husbandry minister P Geethajeevan said the zone would fulfil regulations of the World Trade Organisation and International Organisation for protecting animals from diseases
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She said the state was maintaining a strict vigil to see bird flu did not occur there.

Dairy development minister U Mathivanan, replying to a debate on the demands of grants for his department, said the state would launch a scheme to increase income of milk producers, under which 10,000 cross-bred milch animals would be supplied to rural women self-help groups.

The scheme would be named after DMK founder, the late CN Annadurai, whose birth centenary falls this year, he added.

ICSI Speech Technology Improves Accessibility of IT in Tamil Nadu, India

"I live in a village six kilometers from here in the hills. I came here [Arthoor] to register my boy for school next year. Afterwards, I planned to go to Dindigul [another twenty kilometers away] to get information on plant disease and treatment. [...] My banana crops and all of the banana crops in my village are affected by a disease. [...] Now that I have met you and used this system, I am satisfied. I think that my crops are affected with nematodes or bore weevils. I will go home now and try the recommended treatments."

A banana farmer, who had never attended school but had taught himself to read, was one of several villagers to try a speech-driven dialog system built by ICSI researchers specifically for the needs and conditions of people living in developing regions like Tamil Nadu, India.

ICSI researchers Dr. Madelaine Plauché and Joyojeet Pal, along with Divya Ramachandran and Richard Carlson, were awarded third prize in the CITRIS white paper competition for their proposed work on Simple, Scalable Speech technologies to improve access to Information Technologies (IT) in developing regions. The project, supervised at ICSI by Dr. Chuck Wooters, is part of the UC Berkeley TIER (Technology and Infrastructure for Emerging Regions) project.

Last month in rural Tamil Nadu, where illiteracy rates range from 50% for men to 80% for women, a collaboration between the ICSI researchers and the staff of M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) in Sempatti resulted in the rapid creation and deployment of a low-cost, speech- and touch-screen driven application that enables villagers of all literacy levels to access existing written information.

Plauché, a linguist, and Carlson, a software developer, traveled to Tamil Nadu to meet with Udhaykumar N., a computer science student at Amrita University in Coimbatore and local experts in agriculture, horticulture, and rural development at the MSSRF village resource center in Sempatti. After three weeks of collaborative design sessions, the team converted text from the MSSRF website to a user-friendly interface that provides recommended agricultural practices, pest protection, and yields for local varieties of banana crops, in the form of pre-recorded Tamil and digital pictures. The Banana Crop interface is based on automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology originally developed at ICSI, which was then customized based on the needs of local banana farmers in the Sempatti area.

The multi-modal application was quickly adopted by men and women of varying degrees of education and familiarity with technology. They either spoke single-word commmands in Tamil (i.e. "pests" or "intercropping") or pressed buttons to navigate the visual user interface. The ASR technology accurately recognized speech input despite variations in dialect, environment, and background noise. Young children were especially adept at operating the system, and many people expressed great pride at hearing a computer speak in their dialect about content relevant to their day to day lives. Feedback from the villagers who used the system indicated a strong desire to have information on other crops and other topics in this form. In additon to relying on speech cues and easily recognizable images for ease of navigation, the application conveniently operates via either telephone or PC.

Speech technologies that offer easy access to relevant, up-to-date information are ideally suited for remote regions of the world and regions with high illiteracy rates. According to Dr. Plauché, "access to local, relevant information is extremely valuable for effective short-term and long-term decision making. By creating simple, easy-to-use speech tools, we hope to allow communities with a need for greater access [to this information] to make their own interactive applications."

With that goal in mind, Plauché, Carlson, and Udhaykumar are currently developing Open Sesame, an open source toolkit which will allow non expert speakers of any dialect to convert local language text into accessible, multi-modal applications using Text-to-Speech, Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), and custom localization tools. The application is built with open-source software, rather than proprietary Windows software. The researchers believe open-source software is better suited to developing regions because it is free, and more importantly, easily customizable. MSSRF plans to install a version of the speech application in 100 community village centers throughout Tamil Nadu, Mahrashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Orissa in the next three years. The new version will support three additional languages (Marathi, Hindi, and Oriya) and will greatly improve rural access to information on additional crops as well as topics such as animal husbandry, disaster preparedness, how to start a self-help group, local education and employment opportunites, and basic health and sanitation.

http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/news/2006/nb0602.html

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New technology breakthrough

A technological breakthrough that is on the verge of revolutionising the food processing and packaging industries could soon be offering arable farmers science fiction solutions to the control of pests and diseases.

Nanotechnology is where computer science and chemistry combine down at the atomic and molecular level to create active ingredients with particle sizes so small that they take on new and, seemingly, magical properties.

By 'small' we are talking about one millionth of a millimetre (one nanometre) – that is small enough for particles to be not much larger than an individual atom.

To put that size in context, a virus is around 100 nanometers (nm) and a blood cell is 7,000nm.

Agrochemical companies are already manufacturing crop protection products containing particles of active ingredient that are at or near the nanoscale definition of 1.0nm-100nm. At this size they are between 2,000 and 50,000 times smaller than particles in conventional agrochemicals.

A nanotechnology insecticide, for example, will contain many trillions of particles of active ingredient per litre. The massive extra surface area created by the reduction in particle size can boost potency, accelerate uptake by the plant or pest, increase solubility in the spray tank and reduce or even eliminate the risk of settlement.

Alternatively, it is possible that the performance of an agrochemical containing particles of a conventional size can be boosted simply by adding a catalyst containing nano-scale particles.

The potential of nanotechnology to create products with weird and wonderful properties is prompting the world’s largest chemical companies such as Syngenta, BASF, Bayer and Du Pont to speed up its commercial development.

Active ingredient particle size in some insecticides is already approaching nano scale

Many major governments are lending their support. The 2009 budget of the US National Nanotechnology Initiative is $1.5billion. The UK’s investment is £90m over six years.

The food industry innovations are ahead of those for agriculture; some are already in the marketplace, their development fuelled by the growing demand for safe and healthy food.

So-called ‘Smart Packaging’ innovations include food containers with built-in warning strips of nano-sensors that are sensitive to the gases given off as food gets staler. The strip changes colour to indicate whether the food is fresh or not.

There is a harmless nano-spray based on protein molecules that have been manipulated to glow when in contact with harmful bacteria. Applied to fresh produce at the packing stage it can give an early warning of contamination by salmonella and E. coli.

Bayer already manufactures a plastic film ‘enriched’ with hundreds of millions of silicate particles per square metre that, although slightly above the nanometer scale, are small enough to dramatically increase the fresh life of food, especially meat, by minimising the entry into the package of the oxygen that causes discolouration.

At the same time it slows the drying out process by reducing the loss of moisture from the inside of the pack.

Up to now the brewing industry has been unable to move to plastic bottles because beer reacts with plastic. But now plastic bottles incorporating near nano-sized particles of clay that prevent the reaction between product and package for up to six months are being produced.

The two most exciting nanotechnology innovations in agriculture will be in the areas of a) early warning sensing devices for weather and diseases, and b) improved delivery systems for agrochemical inputs.

In one arable sensing scenario the cropping land of the near future will be laced with tiny granules containing minute wireless nano-sensors that can monitor in-field variations in the environment such as temperature, soil water stress and even plant stress caused by pests or disease.

At the same time, a scattering of minute bio-sensors will chemically detect the presence of disease spores long before there are visible signs of infection on the crop.

These so-called ‘smart fields’ will provide real time information on a range of soil, crop and microclimate conditions that can be located down to the nearest square metre by GPS and will be continuously transmitted to the computer in the farm office to provide a complete plant health monitoring system.

As a result, the human judgement and subjectiveness that has been the basis of crop protection assessments up to now will be strengthened by earlier and more accurate data.

Decisions on the timing of applications of inputs will be improved so that the effectiveness of irrigation and fertiliser and agrochemicals can be maximised

Additionally, these minute in-field sensors will provide all the information needed to programme sprayers to operate a variable spraying rate across the field to match in-field variations in, say, disease, that are unseen by the human eye.

The small nano-particles at the heart of this monitoring innovation are likely to be created by what is called a ‘bottom up’ process, that is their manufacture starts with the smallest units (atoms or molecules) which are micro-modified to take on new properties.

These tiny new units are then added to suitable carriers such as granules or solutions for application in the field.

In contrast, most of the improved crop input delivery systems are being developed using the ‘top down’ process, in which particles of conventional substances are reduced to a minute fraction of their normal size, certainly to less than 500nm and often down to true nanotechnology sizes of less than 100nm.

At this minute scale, they take on radically different properties without resorting to the molecular tinkering of the ‘bottom up’ approach.

The chemical and physical performance of the active ingredient is increased – the product, usually in the form of a dispersion of nano-particles, becomes more potent and gets absorbed more rapidly by the target.

This provides an opportunity to dramatically reduce application rates of chemical per hectare (but not necessarily less spray volume per hectare) without jeopardising pest or disease control.

This has huge significance for agrochemical companies and farmers coming under increasing pressure from regulatory bodies to reduce the chemical load applied per hectare of cropped area.

Syngenta is one of the most active companies in the ‘top down’ approach. Advances in formulation technology have already reduced the active ingredient particles in some of its products down to a size approaching the nano scale.

Karate insecticide, for example, controls pests of cotton, rice and soya bean with near nano-sized particles of a pyrethroid active ingredient encased in tiny, bacteria-sized, water dispersible capsules.

Once applied, the quick-release micro-capsules adhere strongly to the foliage and immediately begin releasing the active ingredient.

A similar technique patented by Syngenta is applied to another insecticide, but in this case the micro-capsules will only release the active ingredient if they come into contact with an alkaline substrate similar to an insect’s stomach – thus improving targeting and reducing unnecessary escape of chemical into the environment.

But despite its major benefits, nanotechnology has a rocky road ahead. Concerns are being expressed about the wider implications of the technique by eminent scientists, government safety authorities and environmental watchdogs such as Friends of the Earth.

Their concerns relate mainly to the fate of manipulated molecules and minute particles of pesticides when released into the environment.

Are the particles so small that they can enter human cells and pose a health hazard? Will the enhanced solubility and mobility of tiny pesticide particles pose a spectacular run-off pollution problem?

Agrochemical companies involved in developing nanotechnology are desperate to avoid a backlash. Most are back-pedalling on earlier enthusiastic claims of an agricultural revolution in the offing and are playing down the extent of their involvement in the technology, but remain convinced of the potential benefits.

The debate is just warming up, but it has such huge implications that it could soon eclipse the GM crops issue.

http://www.farmersguardian.com/story.asp?sectioncode=21&storycode=18376

Mobile soil testing labs in 250 districts

Finance Minister P Chidambaram has announced the setting up of one fully-fitted mobile soil testing laboratory each in 250 districts of the country before March 2009.

While presenting the Union Budget 2008-09 in the Lok Sabha today, the Finance Minister said a one time allotment of Rs 75 crore would be given to the Agriculture Ministry to provide the mobile soil testing laboratories.

In addition to this, 500 soil testing laboratories would be set up in the public private sectors during the eleventh Plan with the Governments assistance of 13 lakh per laboratory. Special thrust was being given to the revival of crops such as coconut, cashew and peeper under the National Horticulture Mission (NHM), he said, adding an outlay of Rs 1,100 crore had been allocated for the same. The NHM now covers 340 districts in 18 states and 2 Union Territories. An area of 2,76,000 hectares had been brought under horticulture crops and an area of 56,000 hectares of old plantations had been rejuvenated.

http://news.webindia123.com/news/Articles/India/20080229/897319.html

Mobile Soil Testing Laboratories

There are 16 Mobile Soil Testing Laboratories functioning in the state with an annual analysing capacity of 2.70 lakh nos. of soil samples. The provision made is towards the staff cost (except Kovilpatti and Aduthurai) machinery and equipments as well as for the purchase of laboratory chemicals.

The scheme functions with the objective of providing site specific fertiliser recommendation to the farmers by bringing the laboratory at the door step of farmers. These laboratories equipped with analytical instruments move around the villages, analysing soil and irrigation water directly given by the farmers. The recommendations are given on the spot. Apart from analytical work, the Mobile Soil Testing Laboratories are used as power propaganda yield for creating awareness among the farmers, not only about the soil Testing Programmes, but also other agro technologies adopted by the department. Besides, the Mobile Soil Testing Laboratories conducts campaigns, farmers day, carrying out village adoption programmes, area development programmes, participates in all the development programme/ functions organised by the district authorities , Nationalised Banks, NGOs etc.

The infrastructure and man power sanctioned has been adequate for carryingout these programmes satisfactorily.

 

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