Success Story-1 - TS-36, a toria variety

Success Story-1

TS-36, a toria variety likely to boost farmers’ income in Margherita Block of Tinsukia district

 

Jagun is a small township of Tinsukia District bordering Arunachal Pradesh in the East and Nagaland in the South-East. People living in this part of the district belong to various cast, creed and community. However, all of them are   predominantly farmers cultivating a number of field and horticultural crops. Being situated at the foot hill of Nagaland and Arunachal, land of Jagun area is very much fertile. River Dihing and a number of small streams encourage farmers to adopt agriculture as a profitable venture.

Sri Gopal Chetri is a progressive farmer of 3no. Rampur village under Jagun Gaon Panchayat. He has a small piece of land measuring about 15 bighas where rice, maize, toria, summer and winter vegetables are grown. Toria is an important oil seed crop that farmers grow in Jagun.  Sri Chetri has a sizeble area under toria. However, the yield that he harvests with local as well as improved variety M-27 is not very encouraging. So, he was looking for a suitable toria variety to replace old varieties.

 During the BFAC meeting of Margherita Block, Sri Chetri was identified as probable beneficiary for demonstrating a new high yielding toria variety. Accordingly, BTT members visited the site and selected him as beneficiary. The team also met other farmers of the village and enlightened them about ATMA and the objective of the demonstration to be conducted in the village. For that a daylong training was also organized in the village. All the farmers participated in the training programme showed keen interest on ATMA and its objectives.

TS-36 is a new high yielding toria variety developed by RARS, Shillongoni, Nagaon. The variety showed good performance in some other parts the district. Hence, it was decided to introduce TS-36 in Rampur village. By middle of October, seeds were collected from BNCA, AAU, and along with other inputs provided to the farmer. Seeds were sown in the first week of November. Soil moisture retained after tillage operation helps in uniform seed germination. As the season progress, BTM and SMS monitored the field activities frequently. Officers from the district HQ along with scientist from KVK, Tinsukia also visited the site and provide necessary guidance. For timely advice, contact number of KVK scientist was also provided to the farmer.

After three months of sowing, the crop was ready to harvest. During this period, the crop received two light showers. BTT visited the site and decided to organize a Field Day at 3no.Rampur villager. Accordingly, a Field Day was organized in the site on 9^th February, 2013 where about 60 farmers from four neighboring villages assembled. A joint field visit was made in the demonstration site where officers from district HQ and KVK also took part. All the farmers were happy with the crop stand, per plant pod number as well as pod size of TS-36. Ceremonial harvesting was done in three plots, each measuring 5mx5m. It was observed that on an average 2.8 kg seed was recorded in 25 sqm plot which is equivalent to 150 kg per bigha or 11.2 q per hectre.  This yield was about 1.5 times more than the neighboring plot of M-27. Sri Gopal Chetry and fellow farmers expressed their satisfaction over the yield performance of TS-36.

After the joint field visit, Sri Chetry spoke about the production technology that he had adopted. He was highly grateful to the team member of ATMA for all the help and guidance. The village head, who preside over the meeting, opined that for overall development of Rampur and other neighboring villages farmers had to adopt new technologies developed in the field of agriculture and allied sectors. He asked farmers to collect seed of TS-36 for the next crop season. Altogether 42 farmers registered their name as probable growers of TS-36 in the coming rabi season. Later, field staff reported that one liter oil could be extracted from 2.7 kg TS-36 seed while to get the same quantity of oil 3.2 kg M-27 seed was required.  

It is now expected that in the coming season more farmers will grow toria variety TS-36 in Jagun panchayat and reap the benefit of it.