Shillong, April 02: Since the North eastern region is fragile, soils are degraded and acidic in nature with unprecedented soil and water erosion, crop production under hill agriculture is severely constrained by prevalence of various abiotic stresses such as nutrient starvation and deficiency especially P and micronutrients, metal toxicities (Al and Fe), frequent occurrence of dry spells and environmental calamities which further gets plummeted and challenging under changing climate.
In addition crop plants are inadvertently exposed to several improper and untimelycrop cultivation practices such as non-scientific crop sowing, improper application of organic pesticides,transplanting shocks which disturb the physiology, crop health and its development in great way. Moreover the current season of the year in the region is equally prone to thunder storms, thunder squalls, flash floods, gutsy winds, hail storms and other environmental anomalies which restricts agricultural production and results in greater or partial loss of crop productivity.
These relentless abiotic stresses, environmental disturbances and crop injuries can be abated by following simple management practices like timely and precise applications of foliar nutrients, bio-formulations humic acid and organic growth promoters and botanicals, suitable seed priming and bio-inoculant treatments, use of bio-fertilizers,vermi-compost and vermin-wash, recycling of crop residues with proper methodology and handling which ideally lead to reduced crop loss and significantly increase the crop production.
Keeping the above facts in mind, tribal farmers especially unemployed educated youth andwomen from nearby villages, Pynthor and Mynsain of Ri-bhoi district, a three daystraining program on “Sensitization of Tribal farmers to Crop Physiological and Environmental Stress disorders in Agriculture and Horticulture” under Tribal Sub Plan (TSP)with on-farm and off-farm lab classes has been organized at ICAR Research Complex for NEH Region, Umiam to create awareness and scientific management and retrieval of crop during occurrence of multiple environmental stresses for sustainable hill agriculture.
During training participants taken keen interest on management of crop disorders and interacted well on every key aspects. Some relevant inputs like, crop specific micronutrients and growth hormone formulations, vermin-compost, handy farm tools and appliances and soil testing kits were distributed.
The programwas successfully co-ordinated by multi-disciplinary team of scientists from Division of Cropproduction Dr. Krishnappa R, Dr.Anup Das, Dr.SubashBabu, Dr.Thoithoi M Devi, NRM Dr.B.UChoudhury, Dr. B.C.Verma, Mrs. Prabha M and Horticulture Dr. V.K.Verma, Dr.Deshmukh NA.
The training ended with positive note of understanding crop and growth stage specific stress problems both in agriculture and horticulture. In days to come further enlightening will be done on advanced strategies of crop management to mitigate these environmental and physiological stress aberrations for the same selected group of young farmers
