BHUBANESWAR: An Orchid Cultivation and Breeding Centre and a Tissue Culture Production facility were inaugurated at the Regional Plan Resource Centre (RPRC) here on Friday to supply new varieties of orchid and produce banana saplings on a mass-scale for farmers of Odisha.
Additional chief secretary, Forest, Environment and Climate Change department Mona Sharma inaugurated the two facilities on the RPRC premises in presence of PCCF and RPRC chief executive Pusazhule Mekro, senior scientist Nihar Ranjan Nayak and other delegates.
Set up at an investment of Rs 4 crore with the help of Agriculture department, the Orchid Cultivation and Breeding Centre will be a platform for the floriculture farmers to know about orchid and the new technologies used in its farming. Besides, it will also help RPRC scientists undertake research for creation of new orchid varieties from the existing species in the country, that can be supplied to the farmers.
The newly inaugurated facility has three orchid cultivation chambers in which low-cost technology has been adopted for cultivation of three varieties of Dendrobium (Earsakul, Singapore White, and Sanan White). Around 300 different orchid species and cultivars have also been collected by the RPRC for development of new hybrids at the breeding centre.
On the other hand, the Tissue Culture Production facility, set up by the Forest department at a cost of Rs 3 crore with support from the centre under Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana, will help produce around 5 lakh banana saplings using tissue culture technology for farmers of the state. The facility has already been approved by the National Certification System for Tissue Culture Raised Plants (NCS-TCP) under Centre’s Biotechnology department.