Rajouri, Sep 5: Regional Agriculture Research Station (RARS) Rajouri organised a Capacity Building Programme on Millets as Climate Resilient Crops with an aim to make farmers and villagers aware about values and benefits of millets. The event was organised by the institute at Irwan Khanetar village of Rajouri.
Millets, often called as a poor man’s food, are becoming more and more common all around the world due to their several dietary and therapeutic benefits.
Driven by nutrition, health and climate resilience, special emphasis is made to revive millet cultivation in the Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. A project on Promotion of Millets and Nutri-cereals under Holistic Agriculture Development Programme (HADP) is sanctioned to SKUAST Jammu under which various field demonstrations and capacity building program are being conducted at various locations of Jammu province. In continuation to this, one day capacity building programme for the farmers of mid hills was organized at village Irwan Khetar to sensitize farmers about the importance of millets as climate resilient crops.
The programme was attended by farmers including farm women of the area while it was was presided over by Dr Vikas Sharma, Chief Scientist and Head RARS, Rajouri.
He interacted with the farmers and provided the information regarding cultivation and benefits of millets to improve the livelihood of the people of the area.
On the occasion, Dr Meenakshi Gupta, Professor Agronomy and Principal Investigator of the project gave detailed information about nutritional importance of millets and their potential into processed and various value added products and emphasized on transformation of millets to agribusiness through branding, marketing and packaging.
She encouraged participants to keep high aspiration and dream big for revolution of millets for a better nation.
Dr. Rohit Sharma, Scientist Agrometeorlogy took the participants around the farmers field and briefed the participants about agronomic package and practices of various millet crops.
