All We Know!!

Anupam Paul Agril Development Officer Agril Training Centre Fulia-741402 West Bengal India
The travalogue of Huang Tsang(7th century),Tavernier(18th century),etc mentioned the remarkable yield of rice in India ,Coimbatore and Tanjavur district of Tamilnadu in particular. In Tanjavur it was 12-18 t/ha and the respective figure for South Arcot was 14.5t/ha.It is really amazing. The British people like A Walker(1820) and Dr J A Voelker(1893)recorded similar results. No hybrid is match for it.In Bengal the highest yeild recorded was 6.6 t/ha(1951) With the passage of time we have lost these region specefic varieties. That goes without saying that it was grown organically.We are proud for the loss so as to give access to MNCs for seed buisness.In Bengal province of India there was a very special cloth called MUSLIN -a 5 metre long and 1,5 metre wide could easily pass through a match box or through a ring .Itwas available during 18th century and the British had earned a lot by exporting to Europe. The thumb of weavers were cut brutally so that they could not weave and it paves the way for importing garment from England.

We are crazy about foriegn technology as if all of these are novel.We cannot think of our glorious past nor we think of bringing back some of the varieties. There are certain technologies by which the yield can be increased such as single plant trasplanting,soil management etc .We have tarnsplanted 97 folk rice varieties organically.The out put of last years(rice and straw) was very encouraging and farmers are amazed to see the glorious past.Some of the farmers are now cultivating the folk rice varieties of Bengal. It is to note that Bengal province once had 5800 rice varieties and India had 42000. Where are the varieties? The yield of some varieties are at par with a popular HYV though it(folk varieties) is grown organically.