ICAR-CIRCOT Organized One day Training Programme for cotton farmers under SMART Project.

India is having 1st place in the world for cotton production, but Indian bales are categorized as highly contaminated. At several stages of post-harvest practices such as harvesting, transportation, storage at farmers’ site and ginneries the contaminants get mixed up with cotton. Apart from contamination, there are many bad post-harvest practices like cultivation of several hybrids, mixing of good quality and poor-quality cottons, sprinkling of water to add weight, improper storage of cotton at farmers’ site, etc. that leads to deterioration of cotton quality causing losses to farmers and other stakeholders. Such practices can be curbed provided farmers are trained and informed about their ill effects.

In order to address these issues, one day training programme on “Appropriate practices for cotton harvesting and biomass utilization” is being organized by Ginning Training Centre (GTC) of ICAR-CIRCOT, Nagpur for 6000 farmers associated with SMART project during November 1-19, 2022 in different villages of Hingna, Saoner, Katol and Narkhed Talukas in Nagpur District. Training programme for about 3000 farmers have been completed so far. These programmes are organised under the World Bank funded SMART project of the Government of Maharashtra aimed to transform Rural Maharashtra through interventions in Agriculture and livelihood sectors.

The training programme focused on creating awareness among farmers on best picking practices, storage, handling of cotton to produce contamination- and trash-free cotton and quality-based grading & marketing of cotton. They were informed about various avenues for cotton biomass utilization to fetch additional income from cotton by-products.