'Rural homemade recipes surprise onlookers'

Scores of women from the rural households brought in finest homemade recipes, which took the onlookers by surprise to know the utilitarian value of coconut.

Technical sessions included “Resource management and sustainable production”, “Climate change adaptation and mitigation” “Post harvest technology and value addition”. Issues, observations and perspective on global level with special case from India, Philippines and Sri Lanka were discussed.

ICAR (New Delhi) Deputy Director General (Horticulture) Dr H P Singh delivered a plenary lecture on ‘Dynamics and co-kinetics of coconut research and development in India’.

Dr Singh gave an over view of the horticultural research and development in India and made a mention on the challenges of climate change in the development of Horticulture.
He dealt in details on the constraints hampering the coconut production, achievements of coconut research in Indian, strategies of coconut development, organic farming, future lines of research with more emphasis on bioinformatics, biotechnology, genomic assisted selection and mapping the resistant genes.

Demand

Annual tender coconut demand is 2300 million nuts (15% of the total nut production). A substantial share of coconut produced in India is used for production of coconut oil (45%). Projected demand by 2020 is 0.435 million ton. Present production  is 0.420 million ton. New products like vinegar, virgin coconut oil, coconut sugar and coconut syrup based products are catching up.

He told, in the interest of environment, there is need to have coconut plantation which could only be sustained if its uses and health aspect is appropriately addressed.
“Evidences suggest that coconut especially virgin coconut oil, tender coconut water and many more coconut products have the capacity to prevent diseases,”  Dr H P Singh opined.

The international conference was inaugurated on October 25 by Minister of State for Agriculture Prof K V Thomas.