The Hindu Business Line : Cos eye sweet sorghum variety

A SWEET sorghum variety developed by scientists under the National Agricultural Technology Project (NATP) has attracted the attention of corporates for production of alcohol as pilot studies showed that up to 90 litres of alcohol can be produced from one tonne of the sorghum stalks. This alcohol can be blended with diesel or petrol.

According to the NATP National Director, Dr S.L. Mehta, the sorghum variety has high sugar content, and Renuka Sugars of Belgaum in Karnataka had gone in for contract farming for its cultivation. The company is also increasing the capacity of its distillery from 1,000 litres to 1,00,000 litres per annum following the successful implementation of the contract farming project.

Other companies that have shown interest in the sorghum variety were Praj Industries of Pune and Mohan Breweries of Chennai. NATP has identified promising sweet sorghum genotypes with green stalk yield of 30 tonnes to 50 tonnes per hectare for the rainfed areas of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka.

Dr Mehta, in Hyderabad recently to attend a national seminar on rainfed agriculture, said that NATP had developed 56 technologies so far, out of which 25 technologies were already in the process of commercialisation.

Besides sweet sorghum, entrepreneurs have shown interest in extraction of natural dyes and herbal tea from safflower petals and eco-friendly cardboards from stalks. As per the 2002-03 annual report on NATP's Rainfed Agro-Ecosystem published by the Hyderabad-based Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture, three companies have come forward in this regard.

While BEC Foods of Raipur came forward for production of yellow dye from safflower petals, Eco Save Systems of Mumbai is interested in production of herbal tea from safflower and Amar Plantations, also from Mumbai, in production of cardboards of safflower stalks.

Similarly, Godrej Plant Biotech is interested in the NATP's technology for production of diabetic health foods from fingermillet; J.K. Seeds in grain drying technology for Kharif sorghum; and Jayanth Oil Mills of Vadodara and Vector India of Mumbai in detoxification technology for castor cake.

An integrated rice-fish-duck and rice-fish-pig farming system module, developed by the NATP, is also stated to have generated interest among the development departments in Jharkhand and West Bengal.

The module had been field tested with 30 farmers in tribal areas of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal, and the return on rupee invested was estimated to generate Rs 1.45 to Rs 6.24 in rice-fish-duck, and Rs 1.55 to Rs 3.69 in rice-fish-pig system.

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