Farmer’s innovation transforms agriculture | Fusion - WeRIndia

Everyone knows that seeds grow plants.  It is quite common that poor quality seeds end up with no fruits and ultimately increase the troubles of farmers.

S Rajarathnam from Tamil Nadu is a fifth-generation farmer. His innovation helps farmers grow plants without seeds.

This 50-year-old mastered in unique leaf-culture technique. In other words, his innovation uses a leaf to grow a plant.

His leaf culture technique is unique and he applied for a patent.

His leaf culture concept got him the honour of the Chinnikrishnan Innovation Award in 2019.

Rajarathnam trained over one thousand farmers, self-help groups and entrepreneurs in this technique without any charge.

Since his childhood, Rajarathnam is passionate about agriculture. Raised in an agricultural family, he decided to follow the footsteps of his ancestors and took up farming as his profession.

Rajarathnam established Eden Nursery Garden for the sake of farmers. This is the first certified organic nursery in the country.

His nursery promotes clonal plant-propagation using leaf culture technique.

Each year around 15 to 20 lakh clonal plantlets are produced including flowering species.

Rajarathnam was fascinated with the concept of tissue culture to propagate plants when he attended the tissue culture course at the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) for five days.

Then, he decided to develop a low-cost technique. He experimented in propagating plants using their leaves.

When asked for why he chose the leaves, he said that leaves are plenty on a plant. Moreover, the plant structure would not be disturbed even if you a pluck a leaf.

In addition to that, farmers need not depend on seeds to multiply their crops. For all these reasons, he chose leaves.

Rajarathnam says that the leaf should be placed in tender coconut water for 30 minutes after plucking from the plant.

Then it is placed in the pocket of a tunnel mist chamber which helps the sapling grow.

The infrastructure setup costs around ₹20,000 to ₹30,000.

Image Reference: Thebetterindia