CSIR-National Chemical Laboratory (CSIR-NCL), Pune signed a Memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Deccan Sugar Technologies Association (DSTA), Pune on July 8, 2019 for the development of sustainable technologies for sugarcane farming.
Agricultural productivity and sustainability has to be enhanced without perpetuating any ecological damage. The continuous use of chemical fertilizers and agrochemicals has showed adverse impact on agriculture, environment and economy as well. Natural plant-microbe environment interactions can be utilized in many ways for enhancing crop productivity. Rhizosphere-associated microbes play a key role in plant growth promotion by protecting plants from deleterious effects such as drought, salinity, pests and pathogens.
CSIR-NCL has an in-house collection of microorganisms at National Collection of Industrial Microorganisms (NCIM) Resource Centre, which is a microbial culture repository dedicated to isolation, preservation and distribution of authentic and industrially important microbial strains. Over last few years, NCIM scientists are working on these microorganisms for their plant growth promotion and bio-fungicidal activities for agriculture applications.
DSTA has done a study, which reveals that, Sugarcane farmers of Maharashtra are facing severe problems for sugarcane growth, soil salinity, draught, fungal diseases, white grub and recently introduced devastating Spodeptera infestation. Due to these problems the yield of Sugarcane has drastically reduced. In order to pool the respective expertise and capabilities, both CSIR-NCL and DSTA are desirous of jointly working on this project for developing sustainable technologies for beneficial application in the above-mentioned issues of Sugarcane crop by using natural preparations. The identified potential strains are scaled up, mass multiplied and formulated using cell protectants and the production technology will be transferred as an output of this project.
Source: http://www.ncl-india.org/
