AG R I C U LT U R E
T
he Asia Sweet potato Breeders and Seed System meeting, an intercontinental initiative held at the Central Tuber Crops Research Institute (CTCRI), Thiruvananthapuram has urged a global move to enhance the production of sweet potato for food and nutritional security. This is the first time that India hosted the meet and the main focus was on the transfer of genetic material and exchange of technology for molecular breeding and value addition in sweet potato. The meet has decided to establish network linking institutes in Kenya, Mozambique, China, Tajikistan, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Nepal, India and Bangladesh, the countries which have achieved progress in sweet potato breeding and cultivation. As a climate-resilient crop that can address malnutrition, sweet potato production assumes significance across the world. As per the latest reports, the sweet potato production in India is 1.4 million tones and area under cultivation is 0.1 million hectares. CTCRI has developed nearly 20 varieties of sweet potato and has taken several initiatives to promote value addition in the crop.
WORLD
‘GREEN’ GDP & GREEN SKILLING
T
he Central government plans to begin a five-year programme to compute district-level data of the country’s environmental wealth. The numbers will eventually be used to calculate every State’s ‘green’ Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The data will help with a range of policy decisions, such as compensation to be paid during land acquisition, calculation of funds required for climate mitigation etc. The first phase of the survey will be implemented in 54 selected districts. The land will be demarcated into “grids” with about 15-20 grids per district. These will capture the diversity in the State’s geography, farmland, wildlife and emissions pattern and will be used to compute a value. The government has also launched a ‘green skilling’ programme under which youth, particularly school dropouts, would be trained in a range of ‘green jobs’ as operators of scientific instruments used to measure environmental quality, as field staff in nature parks, and as tourist guides. Some of the labour required for the survey would also be sourced from the green-skilled workforce.
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JULY 2018
11