Arunachal: Maize Shellers Demonstration & Distribution Programme held at Tawang
The programme was attended by 16 farmers of village Bleting, Buri, Khinmey and Kitpi.
TAWANG– A Maize Shellers Demonstration & Distribution Programme was organized by Almora (Uttarakhand)-based ICAR-Vivekananda Parvatiya Krishi Anusandhan at KVK, Tawang on 10.08.24 in collaboration with KVK, Tawang under NEH Programme of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). The programme was attended by 16 farmers of village Bleting, Buri, Khinmey and Kitpi.
CK Singh, SMS Agrononomy, KVK Tawang welcomed the farmers, and highlighted the importance of maize in the food basket of Tawang farmers and emphasized on the need to improve maize productivity in the district.
Dr RK Khulbe, Principal Scientist, ICAR-VPKAS briefed about the initiatives undertaken by ICAR-VPKAS in collaboration
with KVK Tawang for making agriculture more profitable for the farmers in the district, specifically mentioning the high yielding quality protein maize hybrids and VL Maize Sheller developed by ICAR-VPKAS, Almora, the adoption of which can play an important role in increasing maize productivity in the district, and making shelling of maize easier.
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Explaining the advantages of VL Maize Sheller, Dr Manoj Kumar, Senior Scientist, ICAR-VPKAS, informed that the traditional method of manual shelling that involves removal of grains from maize cob by hand is a tedious and time-consuming task and poses long-term health hazards to the workers involved in this work, which mainly are women. VL Maize Sheller has specifically been designed for hill farmers and greatly reduces the time and labour involved in maize shelling at a low cost.
The practical functioning of VL Maize Sheller was demonstrated to the farmers and the farmers were also sensitized on the precautions to be taken while using the sheller. On this occasion, six VL Maize Shellers were distributed to the farmers of Bleting, Buri, Khinmey and Kitpi villages for community use.
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ICAR-VPKAS scientists Dr RP Meena Dr Mahendra Bhinda and KVK Tawang scientists Dr JK Singh and Dr Divya Pandey also participated in the programme.
VL Maize Sheller has been developed by ICAR-VPKAS, Almora for efficient shelling of maize and is suitable for small and hill farmers. VL Maize Sheller is light weight (54 kg) and can be easily ported by two persons, and runs on 0.5 HP single phase motor. Its threshing capacity is 200-250 kg/hr and threshing efficiency is 95-98%. It causes minimum breakage of grains and cobwood. The unbroken cobwood is used as firewood in many areas.
