Biodiversity Conservation Farm of Agricultural Training Centre: Fulia: Nadia: West Bengal : India at Glance

Agricultural Training Centre: Fulia: Nadia: WB

• Established in 1952 having 15 acres of land, 86 km north of Kolkata
• Imparts training for field level workers of the department and farmers.
• The attached demonstration farm has an orchard of Mango, Litchi, Coconut, Jackfruit, folk rice varieties, vegetables and cattle
• Declared Biodiversity Conservation Farm under the aegis of Biodiversity ACT, Govt of India-2002 by the Directorate of Agriculture, WB in 2006
• Among the 150 nos state run farms, it is the state’s only organic farm
• Organic farming started in 2001 with 5 folk rice varieties by Dr Anupam Paul
• Folk rice varieties were collected from VRIHI( www.cintdis.org), different farmers, DRCSC (WB) different states like Odisha ( Sambhab, and Living Farms), UP (J P Singh of Benaras),Kerala (Thanal, Save Our Rice Campaign),Karnataka (Sahaja Samrudha), Jharkhand( PRADAN, Soumik Banerjee), Maharastra, Assam and Nagaland and exchanged seed with them.
• Out of 300 folk varieties transplanted in 2013 kharif, 39 varieties scented, 31 deep water, 25 short duration, 23 high yielding and 22 are medium to fine grained varieties. It has some special rice – red and black rice, double grained, seeds with an extension of empty glume, deep water, salt tolerant varieties.
• Number of tillers vary from 8-65 and it is also dependent on many factors.
• Morphological studies are conducted, university research scholars are studying.
• It is grown organically by applying cattle and liquid manure produced in the farm
• Single Plant Transplanting ( SPT) method is followed for folk rice (spacing10 x 10 inch), ball method ( after J P Singh) of seedling raising is recently introduced
• A four yearlong study conducted here shows that organically grown folk rice Kerala Sundari (a selection from Purulia district of WB) can compete with modern HYVs with organic matter only, yielding 4.5 t/ha. Some other varieties can give grain yield of 5-6 t / ha.
• The sandy loam farm soil has low Phosphate ( 48kg) and Potassium ( 90kg/ha) but the soil microbes (Colony forming units) and saprozoic nematodes are very high, a key to organic farming, it gives good growth and disease-pest free yield.
• Fifteen seed centres are active in the farmers’ fields of West Bengal from the folk seeds taken from the centre. One centre in Sundarban maintains 280 varieties.
• Seeds of 126 folk rice varieties were received by the farmers in 2013 who give due regard to the intrinsic value of seed. This has set a new record in the history of Govt farms India.

Distribution of Folk Rice seed and Seedlings (last 6 years)

Year of Production	Year of Distribution	No of  varieties distributed	No of recipients farmers
2009	2010	50	56
2010	2011	Year of severe drought	Only panicles were collected
2011	2012	74	121
2012	2013	126	80
2013	2014	100	40
2014	2015	80	66
2015	2016	170	70

                                  Dr Anupam Paul, WBAS, Assistant Director of Agriculture

Agricultural Training Centre: Fulia: Nadia: WB

anupampaul99@gmail.com