C-CAMP, MSSRF Join Hands to Focus on Soil Health and Biodiversity

The highlight of this joint programme is to deploy products -- over 60 innovations -- nurtured by local farmer groups

By Vaishali Mehta
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RAIN programme

The Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms (C-CAMP), an initiative supported by Department of Biotechnology, and the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) have come together to focus on soil health and biodiversity, reducing post-harvest losses, building climate resilience and promoting clean technologies.

The initiative called the Rural Agriculture Innovation Programme (RAIN), will address the challenges faced by small and marginalized farmers.

The collaboration is aimed to develop a joint agriculture innovation programme focused on promoting deep-science innovations and entrepreneurship for India’s food security, sustainable agriculture and allied sectors. The purpose of RAIN is to provide innovators with technologies for on-farm sustainable agriculture, production and quality control.

The programme focuses on small and marginalized farmers, especially women, who provides 60-90% of the world rice crop cultivation and women-lead fisheries enterprises to ensure sustained yield which is threatened due to climate change.

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C-CAMP and MSSRF will collaborate at the Centre of Excellence for Agri Innovation (Agri CoE), supported by government of Karnataka as Knowledge Partner. The two organizations will exchange technical and field support for technology validation, with special focus on local innovations that are culturally a better fit in target areas. They will launch a joint call for innovations against mutually vetted problem statements in food, agriculture, pisciculture, animal husbandry and allied under RAIN.

The key highlight of this joint programme is to deploy the products — over 60 innovations — nurtured by Agri CoE with local farmer groups, encouraging technology adoption for sustainable agriculture, alternative livelihoods, increased biodiversity and agroforestry.

Director-CEO of C-CAMP, Dr. Taslimarif Saiyed, welcomed the partnership saying, “Agriculture and climate are closely interlinked. Due to climate change large parts of the world are becoming food insecure. RAIN with MSSRF comes at this crucial time so that we can build a joint innovation programme in India especially for the vulnerable communities in various ecologies in India, whether it be coastal, or small and marginalised farmers who will benefit from switching crops, etc. The aim is to increase agricultural productivity, identifying rural innovations, increased income for smallholder farmers, women empowerment in agriculture and foremost local solutions to address local or micro pain points.”

Chairperson of MSSRF and former Chief Scientist of WHO, Dr Soumya Swaminathan said, “We will jointly work on the RAIN programme focusing on solving problems of small & marginal farmers through a science-based approach.”

The programme is expected to expand its reach beyond Karnataka to states like Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, and Kerala.

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