Food Security scheme needs active participation of farmers

Emphasising on the importance of farmers in the wake of the food security bill, renowned agricultural scientist Prof M S Swaminathan has said that it cannot be implemented without their active participation.
He was speaking after inaugurating the office-cum-laboratory complex of Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) at Aduthurai near here on October one.
Located at the Tamil Nadu Rice Research Institute (TRRI) campus, the IARI Centre has been functioning since 1968 in the name of Rice Breeding and Genetics Research Centre (RBGRC), a release said today.
Swaminathan, also founder-chairman of M S Swaminathan Research Foundation in Chennai, emphasised the need of cutting-edge research in agriculture and appreciated the efforts of IARI in contributing to the national development through improved varieties.

He emphasised that the Centre at Aduthurai was his dream come true, since he started it as an off-season breeding facility, a unique experiment of its kind in the world, 45 years ago as the Director of IARI.
Dr H S Gupta, Director and Vice-Chancellor of IARI lauded the success of RBGRC in contributing several varieties of national importance.

RBGRC has now grown to be a complete shuttle breeding facility for rice involving a three location loop, between New Delhi, Karnal and Aduthurai, a unique feature in the world, after the successful corn shuttle breeding of CIMMYT, Mexico, he said.

A book on the success story of RBGRC was also released.
Retired scientists of TNAU and IARI, Dr W Wilfred Manual, Dr S Vairavan, Dr P Parthasarathy and Dr U S Natarajan were honoured during the occasion.
Dr K Ramasamy, Vice-Chancellor of the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, also spoke.