Director Agri (J) holds meeting

Jammu: A one day Consultative Forum Members Meeting under CABI’s Plantwise Programme was conducted here Monday to plan activities for the year 2019.
The meeting has jointly been organized by Department of Agriculture, Jammu and Centre for Agricultural Bioscience International (CABI), South Asia.
Speaking on the occasion, Director Agriculture, Jammu Hari Krishan Razdan, said there is need to monitor the ongoing Plant Clinics effectively by the officers to mitigate the plant insect pests and disease proble He impressed upon the officers of department and CABI to expand the outreach of the programme to uncovered areas and farmers. He emphasized that there is need to train second line of Plant Doctors to enhance their skills on handling and managing data. It was apprised that direct advisory service on plant Pest and diseases was recorded for about 2414 farmers till January, 2019 through trained plant Doctors of plant clinics.
Dr Vinod Pandit, Programme Leader, CABI, South Asia presented the preview of Plantwise Planning and said Directorate of Agriculture Jammu and CABI are working towards establishment and quality management of Advisory System through Plant Clinics since 2016. He said CABI is working on Global Level on the principle of “Lose Less and Feed More”.
Ganeshamoorthy Rajenderan, Country Co-ordinator, CABI, South Asia discussed the plan of activities for 2019 onwards that may include development of 20 new PMDGs based on Plant Doctors feedback, two cluster meetings, produce one case study based on the lesson learned, Preparation of Detailed annual report, Data validation, monitoring & evaluation with international expertise through CABI.