Hyderabad: Two-day annual group meeting on oilseeds from today

Hyderabad: A two-day meeting of about 150 scientists from across the country on oilseeds is to take place here from May 25.

In a release, ICAR-Indian Institute of Oilseeds, Hyderabad, Director Dr M Sujatha said, Dr T Mohapatra, Secretary, DARE and DG ICAR, Dr TRS Sharama, DDG Crop Sciences, Dr SK Gupta ADG (oilseeds and pulses) and Dr DK Yadav ADG (Seeds) from ICAR and about 150 scientists and invitees from all over India will attend the meeting that will be held both in physical and virtual mode.

She said the annual group meeting on All India Coordinated Research Programme (AICRP) on Oilseeds, ICAR-Indian Institute of Oilseeds Research (ICAR-IIOR) in collaboration with India Society of Oilseeds Research (ISOR) is organising the meeting on castor, sunflower, sesame and niger on May 25-27. The meeting will focus on reviewing research done during Rabi-2020 and Kharif- 2021, with specific reference to discipline-wise activity milestones assigned in each crop, and to formulate the technical and seed production programmes, frontline demonstrations, strategies and action plans to increase the production and profitability of these four crops in 2022-23.

According to the release, castor, a non-edible oilseed crop, plays a major role in earning foreign exchange with export of its oil and derivatives. During the current year one new hybrid, ICH-5 with high seed and oil yield, wilt and leafhopper resistance is notified by CVRC for rainfed conditions in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Odisha and Maharashtra.

Similarly, a new sunflower hybrid, TilhandTec-SUNH-1, developed at ICAR-IIOR, Hyderabad, for high seed and oil yield coupled with resistance to downy mildew and tolerance to leafhopper, is notified for cultivation under rainfed conditions in

Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Telangana.

In sesame, the availability of high-yielding varieties for summer contributed to area expansion in West Bengal, Odisha, and Madhya Pradesh. There is a scope for expansion to other non-traditional areas.

Studies on promising niger entries for high seed yield, and oil content are going on. Conducting front line demonstrations (FLDS) on improved technologies in farmers' fields, production of breed seed of parental lines, arities and hybrids, as per DAC indent, are the other activities of the AICRP centres undertaken last year.

As a part of the AGM, the varietal identification committee (VIC) will examine the merits of the new proposals submitted and will recommend the suitable varieties to Central Variety Reference Committee (CVRC), she added.