The Indian Council for Agricultural Research-Indian Institute of Horticulture Research (ICAR-IIHR) has collaborated with Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd to set up seed testing centre that will have lot of automation built into the processing facility. The new facility, which more than doubles IIHR seed processing capacity to around 100 tonnes from the current 40 tonnes per year, was inaugurated by ICAR Director-General Himanshu Pathak on Wednesday.

HAL has provided funding for the new seed processing unit through its CSR mandate. The new HAL-ICAR-IIHR Seed Production Centre will augment the existing processing infrastructure for timely processing of seeds and to reduce the labour dependency for making the process cost-effective and efficient. The new facility includes processing machineries such as automated seed coating unit, seed dryer and colour sorters, automatic pouch filling machines among others.

Vegetable, flower seeds

The new facility will enhance the availability of large quantity of quality seeds of ICAR-IIHR bred vegetable and flower crop varieties/hybrids and help expand its market share. IIHR sells about 60 per cent of its seeds online to places including the hilly regions of North East.

Pathak said the IIHR-HAL collaboration was the first of its kind between the ICAR institution and the industry and there will be many more such partnerships going forward. ICAR has decided to collaborate with the private sector and plans to take up joint projects in the areas of research, education and extension.

IIHR, the top ranking institute under the ICAR system, has been working on 54 mandated crops including 13 fruits and 26 vegetables among others, Director, S K Singh said.

New incubation facility

Pathak also inaugurated a Plant Health Clinic, set up under Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana through the Karnataka Department of Agriculture, to analyse and diagnose the plant samples for the presence of pests and diseases and recommend effective control measures.

Also, a centre for spawn incubation and capacity development with specialised facilities such as UV pulse generator, vacuum tray dryer and controlled environment chambers among others was inaugurated by the ICAR DG. A newly-constructed agri incubation facility, the Centre for Excellence on Kamalam fruit under the Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture, approved earlier this year with a financial outlay of ₹5.36 crore, a modern nursery unit that will provide clean planting material with traceability option through and a dining facility for PG students of the institute were also inaugurated on Wednesday.

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