Deendayal Upadhyay Centre of Excellence for Organic Farming was established on October 31, 2017 in an area of about 150 acre at Chaudhary Charan Singh Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar. The farming community is taking keen interest in adopting organic farming to the possible extent and hence to address such issues this centre was started. This farm is well equipped with an automated micro-irrigation system with ample water storage capacity. It has a sub-surface drainage system for recirculation of excess water as well. The farm is directly connected with the “Innovation Centre for Agri-Waste Management” to meet day to day requirement of organic inputs in form of customized bio-fertilizer, liquid slurry, biochar etc.
During the last couple of years, the agricultural paradigm has been shifting from inorganic to organic practices because of growing awareness about soil health, environment, ecosystem and human health concerns among the farmers. Now a days, the farming community has been preferring organic farming and its produce owing to its quality, nutrient status and safe consumption. Secondly, demand for organic food items is going high day by day. The main vision of the center is to identify, develop, refine, validate and promote the socially acceptable, economically viable, eco-friendly and sustainable technologies for healthy and nutritious food production. Its mission is to find out knowledge gaps, development of efficient and innovative technologies starting from seed to marketing of organic produce.
The main objective of the centre is to popularize organic farming, to carry out research and extension activities related to organic farming, to develop a package of practices and to incubate farmers into successful organic growers. The centre will emphasize / focus on the concept of smart farm with circular bio economy / bio-energy. Its key priorities would be (1) optimization of dose and frequency of different organic inputs (2) demonstration of successfully adopted organic farming practices for field crops, horticultural and vegetables crops (3) Organizing farmer trainings related to organic farming (4) Production and assurance of seed availability for organic farming (5) validation and promotion of botanical and bio-pesticides / bioformulations.
Challenges
Management of weeds, insect pests, nutrients and diseases are the major problem in successful crop production. Development of package of practices for different crops is next priority of this center. Sound marketing strategies, popularity of organic crop produce, development of linkages with different organizations, farmers and consumers, development and promotion of on farm / indigenous formulations for the ecofriendly management of insect pests, diseases, nutrients and weeds is challenge to be address properly in coming time.