Demonstration of tuber Crops in Collaboration with CTCRI

Tuber crops are cultivated by tribals and resource poor farmers from time immemorial. Indigenous knowledge on wild tubers is an integral part of the traditional and socio-cultural lives of people in India. Historically, tribal and rural people used to identify and collect wild tubers from the forests and develop a range of processing methods in accordance to their needs. Now, however, this knowledge is being lost as a result of the spread of modern technologies in rural and tribal areas. Moreover the tuber crops play crucial role in food and nutritional security of the tribals. So in collaboration with Central Tuber Crop Research Institute (CTCRI), Bhubaneswar, Odisha, Divyayan KVK conducted demonstration on different tuber crops like elephant foot yam, yam bean, greater yam, casava in 4 ha. area in Angara Block of Ranchi district. 55 nos. of farmers were involved in this programme. Two capacity building training on cultivation of tuber crops were also conducted for the farmers. Resource persons from CTCRI attended and explained in details about the cultivation of the tuber crop at village level. Under this programme 42 farmers were taken on exposure visit to CTCRI, Bhubaneswar to have knowledge about the latest technologies and to have exposure on live demonstration on cultivation of tuber crops.

The result of the demonstration indicated that tuber crops play significant role in the improvement of livelihood security, nutritional security and income of tribal farmers.

To supplement the income of tribal farmers and to improve their livelihood 55 units (1unit= 10 Divyayan Red chicks + 10 Khakhi Campbell duck) of poultry birds along with low cost poultry-cum-duck house and Piglets (2 female piglet to each family and 1 male piglet to a group of 5 families) were provided to 55 tribal families of the village.