Agriculture Current Affair 5 September 2020

Mission Milk has helped India make giant strides in dairying

Phase I of the National Dairy Plan (NDP-I), referred to as ‘Mission Milk — The Next Revolution’, implemented by the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) during 2012-19, helped the country maintain its self-sufficiency in milk production in the post Operation Flood (OF) era.

Phase III of OF (1970-96) had transformed India from a milk-deficit nation to the world’s largest milk producer.

Vidharbha region farmers in a fix over rains, pest attack on pulse crop

The bountiful rains in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra have also brought in its share misery to the farmers with crops such as Moong, Urad and Toor dal facing pests attacks leading to major crop losses.

Vidarbha is located in eastern Maharashtra, and it borders Madhya Pradesh in the north and Chhattisgarh in the east.

In Akola district alone almost 90 per cent of the moong (green gram) crop planted over 21,989 hectares have been lost due to attacks by sucking pests and plant viruses. The sucking pests bore holes in the plant, which makes it vulnerable to secondary infections by viruses. Urad has also been planted over 15,383 hectares with about 40 per cent crop losses.

CPCRI’s Vittal station produces 1 lakh areca seedlings

The regional station of the Central Plantation Crops Research Institute (CPCRI) at Vittal in Dakshina Kannada district of Karnataka has produced around 1 lakh seedlings of different varieties of arecanut this year, according to a scientist.

Speaking at an online training programme on ‘Good cultivation practices in arecanut’, organised by the CPCRI’s regional station on Friday, Nagaraja NR, a scientist from the station, said that there is good demand for the different varieties of arecanut seedlings.