AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH
From its inception till the early 1980s, Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) carried out research purely in agriculture. The aim was to help the farmers get higher returns by developing better hybrids/varieties of the locally grown crops like cotton, grain sorghum and safflower; as also to introduce new crops like sweet sorghum, sugarbeet etc. The work done on these crops is summarized below:
Cotton
Cotton was one of the first crops in which extensive breeding was carried out at NARI . The cotton variety Nimbkar-1 developed by NARI spread like wildfire across Maharashtra covering several thousand acres of land in the 1970s. The farmers who grew Nimbkar-1 and hybrid NH-391 got much higher remuneration than those growing the other cotton varieties. Even though the popularity of cotton decreased in western Maharashtra over the next few years due to diseases, NARI carried out its research for over a decade.
Sugarbeet
Work on sugarbeet started at NARI with the aim of introducing an alternative to sugarcane especially in water-short areas. Due to its pioneering work on agronomy of sugarbeet, NARI was made a centre of the All India Coordinated Project on Sugarbeet by ICAR, GoI in 1971. But after a decade, research on sugarbeet was discontinued due to problems faced by the sugar mills in processing beets for manufacturing sugar from them. The ongoing all India project on sugarbeet was converted to one on safflower in the early 1980s.
safflower
NARI had started breeding of safflower in the 1960s but it was only in the 1980s when its research gained momentum. Earlier in Phaltan and surrounding areas, safflower was grown as a rainfed crop. After NARI was able to lift water from the Nira right bank canal, the research on growing safflower with limited irrigation for getting better yields was initiated. Over the years, NARI has developed and released 5 varieties and 3 hybrids of safflower for cultivation all over the country. All of them are high yielding with some giving high oil yield. NARI also developed suitable agronomy for growing safflower under limited irrigation. World’s first non spiny safflower hybrid NARI-NH-1 was developed by NARI. Apart from its traditional usage i.e. for edible oil production, NARI tried to popularize the use of young safflower plants as nutrient-rich leafy vegetable and dried safflower flowers as antioxidant-rich herbal tea. To facilitate the collection of safflower flowers from spiny varieties, NARI also developed a solar-powered petal collector.
Sorghum
Grain sorghum used to be a major locally grown crop. The sorghum variety Vasant-1 developed by NARI gained widespread popularity in Maharashtra and Karnataka in the early 1970s. Later in the same decade, NARI for the first time introduced sweet sorghum in India. Since then, the institute has developed several high yielding varieties with high sugar content. Due to its usage for simultaneous production of grain, sugary juice and animal fodder, NARI envisioned sweet sorghum as an excellent multipurpose crop to be grown across the country. For producing ethanol from sweet sorghum juice, NARI set up a solar-powered distillation unit in 1987. NARI also developed the end-to-end technology for producing jaggery and syrup from sweet sorghum hybrid ‘Madhura’ in the mid-1990s. Based on its excellent anti-oxidant activity and other nutritional qualities, NARI has been popularizing the ‘Madhura’ syrup for the last two decades. This brochure gives details about the syrup.
Fodder
Most recently, NARI has been working on fodder crops like leucaena, stylo, buffelgrass and opuntia cacti (seen in the photo above) which need relatively less water and other resources to grow and produce nutritional feed.
Field of sweet sorghum hybrid ‘Madhura’ at NARI
Sweet sorghum syrup preparation using gasifier
Sweet sorghum syrup ‘Madhura’
Safflower field at NARI
Using honeybees inside shade nets for breeding safflower
Battery powered safflower petal collector
Herbal tea from safflower petals
Seed bank at NARI
Opuntia Cacti
Wondergraze (Luecaena)
Laredo (Buffelgrass)
