For the last five years, Kolhar town of Basavanabagewadi taluk is witnessing a unique type of jatra. During the fair, an association of progressive farmers arranges a Krishi Mela (agriculture fair) for educating the farming community about the importance of organic farming.

“It is a one-of-its-kind event which is purely by the farmers, of the farmers and for the farmers. Unlike any other agriculture fair which organised by government, here, only the farmers contribute to the event,” said Siddu Balagonda.

The progressive farmer who is behind the unique event says that for the last five years he has been organising the fair with the help of other farmers in the town during the Uppashappa temple fair. He said that they noticed that during the annual religious fair, hundreds of people, mostly farmers were arriving to the temple.

“We thought of using the opportunity to hold an event which could help the farming community.

Thus, we chose to organise an agriculture fair on the issue of organic farming as it has become the need of the hour,” Mr. Balagonda said.

Winner of ‘Krishi Pandit’ and a recipient of many such awards, he said that owing to excess and unabated use of chemical fertilizer, the soil is losing fertility and commodities are becoming unhealthy.

‘Save soil’

“The best way out to save soil and have healthy food is to switch over to organic farming.

“The fair essentially focuses on this critical aspect where every year we call the experts and progressive farmers to make farmers aware of its significance for the present and future generation,” he said.

To a question, he said that the farmers have contributed around Rs. 7 lakh for holding the event.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> National> Karnataka / by Firoz Rozindar /Kolhar (Vijayapura Dist). / August 25th, 2015

A simple and rugged technology developed by scientists at Indian Institute of Science by utilising crop waste is promising triple benefits — filling up shelves in supermarkets with mushrooms, empowering tribal women through commercially viable mushroom cultivation, and ensuring higher nourishment for tribals through mushroom-rich diets.

Scientists from IISc’s Centre for Sustainable Technologies (CST) have developed biogas reactors which ferment straw, weeds and leaf litter. They have combined these with other agricultural wastes and digested residues from bio-gas units to create a fertile ground for edible mushroom cultivation.

The researchers found that this unique substrate efficiently converts crop waste into usable protein for human consumption, and also boosts mushroom yield as compared to conventional methods. The researchers supplemented biogas digester residue with agricultural waste – paddy straw or coir pith in a specific ratio – to maintain structure suitable for mushroom growth.

They also used paddy straw and coir pith alone as substrate for comparison. These substrates were processed, sterilised, hydrated and seeded with mushroom species – Pleurotus florida and Pleurotus flabellatus. After mushrooms started growing, the substrate was incubated in polythene bags and kept in a humid chamber under laboratory conditions.
They found that paddy straw supplemented with bio digester residue appeared to be the most efficient substrate to grow more nourishing mushrooms. They saw increased yield for the mixed substrates — with the highest for P. florida in paddy-straw — bio-digester residue mixture at a record 2.32 kg mushroom per kg substrate, CST’s chief research scientist Prof HN Chanakya (in pic) said.
P florida gave the best yields among the two mushroom species tested. An increase in mushroom yield by as much as 20-60% using biogas digester residue mixtures sounds like good news for the bio-gas initiative, which can quote protein generation as an additional incentive, according to Chanakya. The scientists think the improved mushroom varieties could be a result of better nutrient supply with the addition of bio-digester residue and structural properties of agricultural waste allowing better aeration and gas exchange. In the coming days, the scientists plan to take this technology to two villages — one in Male Mahadeshwara Hills in Karnataka, and the other near Tejpur in Assam. “We plan to train 100 tribal farmers at each location,” he told Bangalore Mirror.
He said that while the ultimate aim is to popularise protein-rich mushroom consumption among the masses, it would also empower tribal women to grow mushroom using this technology which is sought to be made more rugged and simple for them to use. While at it, mushrooms would also be encouraged to be a nourishment-enhancing part of the diet for the tribal folks, he said. Their research paper was published in the online version of the journal Energy for Sustainable Development.
Sreesha Malayil and Vijayalakshmi C, both from CST, were the other two researchers on the project.

HOW THEY DID IT
* Bio-gas reactors breakdown plant material in the absence of oxygen to produce methane that can be used as a clean fuel, while generating digested by-products rich in organic matter.
* They first developed a novel reactor that can use plant waste, and not just cow dung like a traditional ‘gobar’ gas plant.
* They then investigated if such digested plant material can be efficiently used in mushroom production.
* Mushrooms belong to a class of fungi called ‘basidiomycetes’ which efficiently breakdown the compound lignin, which gives toughness to plant structure.
* This property makes mushrooms ideal organisms for recycling such inaccessible nutrients hidden in biogas digester residue.
* Samples were collected at regular intervals to assess residual nutrient and elemental concentrations in the substrate.
* The mushroom fruiting bodies were weighed and biological efficiency – mushroom weight per kg substrate weight – was calculated.

CAN PRODUCE ETHANOL TOO
The substrate by-products from mushroom cultivation can be further used to produce ethanol, the additional step ensuring utmost utilization of organic resources in plant waste. Such downstream applications of biogas digester waste create optimism for bio-gas plants which might become harbingers of energy cleaner than ever before.

source: http://www.bangaloremirror.com / Bangalore Mirror / Home> Others> Sci-Tech / by Nirad Mudur, Bangalore Mirror  Bureau / June 08th, 2015