The Meeting of ICAR Regional Committee-V held

14 December 2012, New Delhi

The meeting of ICAR regional committee-V was held in New Delhi on 14-15 December under the chairmanship of Dr. S. Ayyappan, Secretary, DARE and DG, ICAR. It was organized by Central Soil Salinity Research Institute, Karnal. Sh. Siraj Husain, Additional Secretary, DARE and Secretary ICAR and Sh. Ashish Bahuguna, Secretary, Agriculture and Co-operation participated in the meeting as Guest of Honour.

Dr. S. Ayyappan, DG, ICAR, in his address, emphasized the need of preparing strategy to face the agriculture related problems of different regions of country. He said that most of the states are at present facing the challenges related to water logging, declining soil fertility, increasing soil salinity, toxicity, reducing crop productivity, falling ground water level, crop diversification, diseases of cattle etc. He also spoke about the different programmes initiated by ICAR regarding agriculture, animal husbandry, dairy, fisheries etc to tackle the aforesaid problems. He suggested that practices of zero tillage, use of soil and water in agriculture, use of hybrid cattle and fisheries would be useful for the small farmers. He called upon to give special attention to the programmes related to recharging of ground water, multipurpose use of water and making available the seeds of improved varieties crops to the farmers on larger scale.

More than 150 participants attended this meeting from Haryana, Punjab and Delhi, including the agriculture officials, senior officials of ICAR and its institutes situated in these states.

Dr. KML Pathak, DDG (Animal Science), ICAR in his speech talked about the problems being faced by the states under regional committee-V and also suggested remedies. He also described the agriculture related strategy for next two years. Dr. Dinesh Kumar Sharma, Director CSSRI, Karnal presented the minutes and action taken report of the regional committee meeting held in 2011.

ICAR has divided the country on the basis of the climate into 8 regional committees. The basic aim of constituting these committees is to timely address the problems related to these regions and preparing the policy for development in agriculture.

(Source: CSSRI, Karnal )