NEW DELHI: Union Agriculture and Food Minister Sharad Pawar has urged the State Governments to step up the budgetary allocation for the farm sector and irrigation. Departing from his prepared text at the 76th annual general meeting of the Indian Council of Agriculture Research Society here on Saturday, Mr. Pawar said he had written to the State Governments.

The budgetary allocation for irrigation was 0.35 per cent of the total plan, while the provision for drought was one per cent. For the country to achieve four per cent growth in the farm sector, money would have to be provided for irrigation, rural roads and the fisheries sector.

"Allocation to the agriculture sector was only two per cent of the budget when 70 per cent people depended on it, while the telecom sector got 16 per cent," he said. A sub-committee on agriculture, headed by him, set up during the recent meeting of the National Development Council would go into this issue.

Mr Pawar, who is the president of the ICAR Society, said biotechnology was an effective tool for reaching "new horizons" in crop, animal and fish productivity globally. "It is essential to develop world-class biotechnology research facilities to derive benefits from biotechnological advances. The overall strategy regarding [the] agricultural sector needs to be designed to harness the potential of cutting-edge science while building on the primary production base."

The ICAR established four regional referral laboratories in Delhi, Mumbai, Cochin and Nagpur for quality assurance.

These were for monitoring pesticide residues, development of standards, certification of export commodities.

Referring to the formulation of a project by the ICAR to produce high quality seeds and planting materials, the Minister expressed the hope that farmers would have greater access to quality seeds.

In his report, ICAR Director-General Mangala Rai said the Council had filed 52 applications for patents of new technologies. It assigned 31 technologies to the National Research and Development Corporation for commercialisation. During the year the Council produced 4,021.38 tonnes of breeder seeds — oilseeds (1,811.57 tonnes), cereals (1,469.54 tonnes), pulses (674.58 tonnes), forage (38.57 tonnes) and fibre crops (27.12 tonnes). Besides, additional breeder seeds were produced against an indent for State-level varieties.

The Zero Till Technology, spread to nearly 1.5 million hectares, resulted in a net annual resource saving of about Rs. 350 crores. It had potential for saving from 10 million hectares in the Indo-Gangetic plains and also in other cropping systems.

The number of Krishi Vigyan Kendras was increased to 485. The impact of the KVK technological interventions was visible in rainwater harvesting, women empowerment, poultry, value addition and off-season vegetable production in rural areas.

About 200 KVKs were being provided e-connectivity to facilitate greater flow of information.

The increase in internal resources generation during 2004-05 was Rs. 42.63 crores, as against Rs. 25.56 crores the Council realised during 2003-04 through its institutes. During the year, the National Seed Gene Bank was enriched with over 24,690 accessions. As many as 77,000 samples including 59 transgenics were processed for quarantine clearance, and 192 phytosanitary certificates issued for germplasm export.

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