Project Name : Tissue Culture in Date Palm
Theme Name : Agriculture and Food Security
The main objectives of our project are:
To make people aware about tissue culture technique and how it can be a boon in the cultivation of date palm.
To popularize the nutritional components of dates. How regular consumption of dates prevents the development of many diseases like heart ailments, tumours, asthama, kidney stones, etc.
To disclose the statistics of annual date production in the three major producers of date in India which are Gujarat, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu.
To increase the nation‟s income and wasteland development through tissue culture in date cultivation.
Theoretical estimation of future prospects of date palm cultivation using tissue culture technology.
Methodology followed:
For our research study we visited Plant Tissue Culture Laboratory of Anand Agriculture University, Gujrat, the only laboratory in India which has successfully demonstrated micro tissue technique in India. We collected the data for date palm cultivation of Gujarat from the assistant research scientist in the Department of Agricultural Biology, Dr. Amritpal Singh.
We prepared a similar data sheet for Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu based on information and inputs from Dr. R. Raj Bhansali, Principal Scientist, CAZRI, Jodhpur and Mr. K R Muhammad Nassar, an agriculture graduate working for date palm development in South India respectively. Finally we analyzed the whole data and did a theoretical estimation of future profit earned by the farmers by growing tissue culture raised palm trees in their fields.
We realized that tissue culture technology can prove to be a boon for farmers if used for mass cultivation of date palms in India. One of the key benefits of this method is that the farmer will get uniform yield in terms of quality and quantity from all the plants grown in their field.
This will not only increase the income of farmers to many folds but the surplus production of crop will also boost the foreign exchange. In addition to that this will also help in combating desertification.
Name of the School: Airport School, Ahmadabad
