The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) must provide adequate grant for scientific experiments and for the conduct of field trials, TNAU Vice-Chancellor K. Ramasamy has said.

Grant for field trials

Responding to ICAR’s Assistant Director General (Oilseeds and Pulses) B.B. Singh’s warning about cutting down grant to those centres that are unable to conduct trails, Ramasamy said: "there are lots of resources in the system. The scientists are paid well, but unfortunately, the working grant for field trials is inadequate.

"The ICAR must provide more funds for conduct of field trials lest the efforts are shelved and not translated to application-oriented system. There is no point blaming the scientists,’’ he said.

The Vice-Chancellor’s comment came close on the heels of Singh’s remarks at the inaugural session of the annual group meeting on pigeonpea, mungbean and uradbean. Over 100 scientists attended the meeting at the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University.

Farm research

While commenting about the poor allocation of funds for field trials, Ramasamy did not fail to mention that the success rate of agricultural research in this country was as high as 78 per cent compared with 7 per cent success in the US and 12 per cent in the UK.

“The Department of Science and Technology has earmarked more funds in the XII Plan.’’

“We are unable to evaluate our own strength,’’ he said, adding, “every one is coming here to take our people for doctoral programme and we are losing our talent pool to others. In the name of dual degree, we are losing our young scientists,’’ he said.

Reverting to the pulses scenario, Ramasamy said: “Farmers in Thanjavur region continued to get the highest return from pulses even today. We need to work together to develop genotypes. We have genetic and crop diversity as also the technology to attain self-sufficiency.’’

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