By Our Staff Reporter
Dehradun, 5 Aug: Agroforestry plays an important role in the livelihood of rural society and has potential to generate employment for rural youth especially through commercial utilisation of agroforestry produce in the form of raw material and products. Keeping this in view, Extension Division of Forest Research Institute, here, organised a webinar on “Agroforestry and Livelihood Generation”, targeting different stakeholders like State Forest Departments, Research Institutes under ICFRE, students of Colleges and Universities and Management Institutes, trainees of IGNFA and CASFOS, Non Government Organisations, Self Help Groups, entrepreneurs, etc.
Richa Misra, Head, Extension Division, welcomed the participants and gave an overview of the webinar, which was formally inaugurated by Arun Singh Rawat, Director General, Indian Council of Forestry Research & Education and Director. In his inaugural address, he mentioned that the institute plays an important role in research on agroforestry. The technology developed by the Institute needs to be disseminated to the stakeholders through Extension activities. These activities are being carried out through Van Vigyan Kendras established in the states under its jurisdiction. He stated that the institute would extend its extension activities through networking of Van Vigyan Kenrdas and Krishi Vigyan Kendras.
The issues focused on in the webinar were: Potential of non timber forest species for livelihood generation, Melia and Poplar based Agroforestry systems for livelihood improvement in Uttarakhand and Punjab, Growing and utilisation of Multi Purpose Agroforestry species for livelihood improvement, Value addition of plantation timber for livelihood generation, Insect Pests of Poplar and their management, Management of fungal diseases in Agroforestry species, Beneficial fungi- Cultivation and utilisation of edible and medicinal mushrooms, Prevalent Agroforestry systems in Haryana, Recent advances in Agroforestry in Punjab.
Among the speakers were Dr AK Pandey, ADG (Media & Extension), ICFRE, Dr Amit Pandey, Head Forest Protection Division, Dr DP Khali, Scientist-G Division of Forest Product, Charan Singh Scientist-E, Dr Devendra Kumar Scientist-E, Rambir Singh Scientist-D of Extension Division, Dr Shailesh Pandey Scientist-D Pathology discipline of FRI, Dehradun, Dr Sanjiv Kumar Chauhan, Professor, Punjab Agriculture University, Ludhiana, and Dr Sandeep Arya, Professor, Choudhary Charan Singh Haryana Agriculture University, Hissar, who expressed their views on different agroforestry aspects. The team of Extension Division, FRI, under the guidance of Richa Misra worked to make the webinar successful.
The team of Information Technology Division of ICFRE led by Ashish Kumar Sinha, Head, IT Division, and Jitendra Kumar, Scientist-D, and Rajneesh from Forest Informatics Division of FRI facilitated the entire programme.
