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Showing posts from March, 2022

Diversifying Agriculture in Punjab - By Dr B K Singh & Ruchi Sinha

In 1947 British left India as a starving nation and State of Punjab bleeding from partition. Plagued the successive droughts and starvation deaths lead to some adventurous decisions by the Govt of India. Thanks to the then PM Smt. Indira Gandhi, Sri C Subramaniam Minister of Agriculture for their leadership and political will to allow foreign bred seeds into India for adoption on mass scale. (Today we continue to dither on GMOs). The green revolution started in mid 1960s with introduction of high yielding of Paddy verity (IR-8) ex IRRI Philippines and Wheat(K-68) ex Mexico.   Both the varieties were dwarf in height compared to crops traditionally grown in India and faced farmers reluctance in adoption.    Scientific endeavors of Dr M S Swaminathan and Norman Borlaug, backed by Innovative Extensions Methodologies invented by Dr K N Singh to roll out quickly new verities to selected hard working and innovation guzzling farmers of the then Punjab through National Demonstrations. This meth