A very rewarding experiment

KESHOD (JUNAGADH DISTRICT), April 27: Thakarsibhai SAVALIA, an ordinary farmer of Pankhan village (14 km from here) may not have cried `eure...

KESHOD (JUNAGADH DISTRICT), April 27: Thakarsibhai SAVALIA, an ordinary farmer of Pankhan village (14 km from here) may not have cried `eureka’, as Archimedes did, but he was intelligent enough to realise that he had stumbled upon something extraordinary: a new variety of groundnut that outclasses existing varieties. He became, in the process, the first Indian farmer to have developed a seed that has been sent for multi-locational trials by the All India Coordinated Groundnut Research Project.

Confirming the emergence of this variety, Dr M S Basu, project coordinator of Junagadh’s National Groundnut Research Centre, says the all-India kharif groundnut workshop held in

Bhubaneshwar early this month accepted the entry of `morla’ for all-India testing.

The `Morla’ (so named because of the pod’s peacock-like shape) variety of groundnut seed is different in more ways than one. "I observed that the plants flowered in 20-22 days in comparison with 28-30 days in case of the Somnath variety. I was convinced that this was altogether an alien variety," he said. The plant has a natural resistance to diseases, a smooth pod which avoids having soil stick to it and a strong stem, enabling the farmer to pull all the pods at one go. Also, it can be grown in summer and has a higher oil percentage than other varieties.

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"It is time we start recognising the contributions made by individual farmers in developing new strains", said Prof Anil Gupta of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, who is part of Shrishti, an organisation scouting for, and helping, such innovative farmers.

Ironically, Morla was a chance discovery by Savalia, who had been working on the crop for the past 10 years before it finally gained recognition. He first noticed the plant after the drought in 1987 as it looked different from the others; he selected the seeds and began a series of experiments using his own farm techniques to breed them.

He began by sowing the alien variety separately, which yielded noticeably greater returns. In 1991, he sowed the new variety over a half-bigha plot and ploughed the land himself to check the result. " I found that what I had sown was a bold variety and it had grown in the columns of small variety”, Thakarsibhai explains. Next year, he further carried out experiments and sowed his new variety, along with other two varieties in one acre each. The yield per acre was more than 50 kgs in case of the new variety.

This prompted him to concentrate on the new variety. Scanty rainfall brought the yield down to 300-360 kgs per acre in the first year, against the 300 kgs yielded by other varieties. The next year, however, a favourable monsoon saw production shoot up to 1200 kgs per acre. The oil percentage was 50-51 per cent in the new seeds.

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A confident Thakarsibhai then began distributing the new variety to others, who also reported good results. He has now given up the use of organic fertilizer and pesticides.

Today the 58-year-old farmer, who lacks basic education and tends a 25-bigha plot of land, has injected a shot of pride not only in himself but also in many of his ilk who know that they can also discover and experiment on their own.