Safflower seed and petals
Safflower Crop
NARI has developed various safflower varieties and hybrids for both high oil content and petals. Petals are obtained from capitulum after the seed has set. They are generally harvested just before seed-harvest. Thus they are naturally dried.
Thrust areas of Safflower program at NARI:
- To develop high seed yielding and high oil containing varieties.
- To develop a whole plant utilization approach
- To develop wilt resistant varieties and hybrids
- To identify and develop cytoplasmic-genetic male sterility system
- To promote safflower petals as natural food coloring agent and as herbal health tea
- To use the safflower residue as fuel in NARI biomass gasifier
- Seed of spiny and non-spiny varieties and hybrids are available.
Battery powered Safflower petal collector
Major accomplishments of NARI program:
- Release of variety NRS-209 ( Nira) for limited irrigation conditions of Maharashtra.
- Development of variety NARI-6 which has been released nationally in February 2001.Release of NARI-NH-1(a non-spiny hybrid) in August 2001.
- Development of non-spiny safflower varieties and hybrids for both seed and petals. In national trials they have performed better than the checks.
- Development of 10 spiny and 3 non-spiny genetic male sterile lines.
- Development of battery powered and petrol powered petal collectors. They are excellent for collecting petals from spiny varieties.
- Popularization of safflower petals as herbal tea. We were the first organization in India to start test marketing of this tea. This test marketing has been going on since 1998. Safflower tea is now accepted by large number of people in different cities. Our work has been picked up by various agricultural universities of Maharashtra and they are also trying to popularize it.
