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Honey bee publish details |
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NIF AWARDS-II |
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8th National Biennial Grassroots Innovation Awards-II |
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National second: VeterinaryHerbal medication for respiratory distress in poultryShatadal Ghorai and Narugopal Ghorai (community representatives), Purba Medinipur, West Bengal Respiratory distress is a fatal and infectious disease among poultry. The affected birds show symptoms of sneezing, gasping and infection in bronchitis which may lead to sudden death. Shatadal Ghorai and Narugopal Ghorai, both herbal healers, administer a herbal formulation to treat the medical condition in birds. Shatadal Ghorai (55), a widow, has been practicing herbal medication since her teenage. Her husband was a daily wage labourer who died early, leaving behind young children and family for her to take care of. She managed by doing odd tasks at times and receiving alms. Shatadal is not educated but has a good knowledge of herbs, which she learnt from her father. Her father was an expert herbal healer who used to give medicines free of cost to the people. In early 1970s, lot of chicken in her village died due to respiratory distress. She tried to cure them using herbs. The medication showed moderate results. Shatadal continued to work on improving the method of preparation and got better results. She was thus able to help a number of poultry keepers. She has since then been using this particular medication to cure respiratory distress and is recognised for the same in her village and nearby areas. She does not charge any money for her services, however, sometimes people give her rice or paddy as a token of their appreciation. She is very active in social work in her village. Narugopal Ghorai (51) is a casual labourer from a nearby village and earns his living by traditional folk songs. He learned herbal medications from a guru, whom he reveres a lot. He does not charge any fee from people whom he administers herbal medicines, however, accepts voluntary payment. He is helped by his wife and children in collection of herbs and preparation of the medications. His desire is to help people with whatever knowledge and resources are available with him.Both Shatadal and Narugopal use a local herb (name withheld for IPR reasons), in combination with other herbs, to prepare a medication to treat respiratory distress in birds. Medication is given orally twice or thrice a day depending on severity of the condition. It is administrated until the affected birds get cured, generally within five days. NIF facilitated the testing of the herbal formulation on some affected flocks in Nagpur region. The results revealed there was significant increase in immunity against the Newcastle disease. The mortality also reduced considerably. In addition to protection against respiratory distress, the medication was also found to be effective against the bacterial infection caused by E.coli in poultry. NIF filed a patent in the name of the healers and is trying to commercialise the product so that the benefit may reach the poultry farmers. National third: Agricultural engineeringSugarcane bud-planting machineRoshan Lal Vishwakarma, Narsinghpur, Madhya PradeshSowing of sugarcane buds in field is laborious and time consuming. Not maintaining uniform distance between the buds and/or varying the depth while sowing manually may result in less productivity. To address these problems, Roshan Lal (47) has developed a tractor-operated sugarcane bud planter.BackgroundThe son of a farmer, Roshan Lal has evolved into a master craftsman and skilled technician. He repairs farm implements and equipment, and develops innovative machineries at his workshop. Apart from his craft, he shares a passion for painting. His family consists of his wife and four children, two daughters and two sons.After completing his schooling, he took admission in a graduate course in the Government College at Narsinghpur. Being the only son and, with three sisters to marry off, he had to drop out midway to help his father at the farm. When he was fourteen, he developed a gun that could fire matchsticks and scare away the monkeys from the fields. Some of his friends bought a couple of these and used them. In 1988, he purchased a sprinkler irrigation system for his farm. One day, someone stole one of the nozzles from the sprinkler. He could notice the drop in pressure only after sometime. He began thinking of ways by which he could have detected the leakage and the consequent fall in pressure earlier. Materialising his thoughts, he developed a valve connected with a two-way switch and fitted it in the delivery line. Any damage or loss of nozzle created a pressure drop in the line and in turn triggered the two-way switch to turn the signaling bulb on. In 2006, Roshan Lal developed three machines for sugarcane farms. These machines were the sugarcane leaf stripper, set cutter and the bud chipper. The leaf stripper removed the leaves so that the marauding insects cannot lay their eggs on them. He improvised the machines a number of times to get the optimum cutting action, reduced the number of flaps, and introduced curved blades with serrated edges after collecting feedback from the users. The sugarcane bud-chipper is a device used to efficiently chip off a piece of the sugarcane node. For this device, he received a consolation award in NIF’s Fifth National Awards in 2009. This technology has been taken up by Tata Agrico for marketing. Later in 2008, he developed a three-wheeler pesticide sprayer with a tank capacity of 60 liters and which can be pushed manually over the field. It covers more than one acre in an hour and is provided with eight adjustable nozzles and has a coverage of four meters. Genesis While marketing and promoting the sugarcane bud chipper, Roshan Lal realised that in sugarcane farming, many drudgery-related issues have remained unaddressed. He observed that farmers prefer to plant sugarcane buds directly in the field manually, which is a cumbersome and time consuming. Once the problem got identified, he started working on the solution. Initially, he developed a manual planter, with one particular type of metering mechanism. He tried it in his field and upon obtaining successful results, he converted the manual version to a tractor-mounted planter. The sugarcane bud planterThis is a tractor-mounted sugarcane planter with a unique metering mechanism for planting sugarcane buds directly into the field. As per claims, the field capacity of the machine is 0.5 acre/hour. Using this planter, the plantation cost is estimated to reduce to about Rs 800/acre from about Rs 6,000/acre using labour. The plant-to-plant sowing distance can also be adjusted according to the requirements. It can also be used for simultaneous application of fertiliser, pesticides or herbicides in the field. For this purpose, the machine is equipped with a sprayer pump. The machine can also be used for intercropping along with sowing of sugarcane buds. Pulses, wheat, potatoes and peanuts can be planted in between two rows of sugarcane. The machine is helpful for farmers as it can overcome the scarcity of labourers in the peak season. The machine requires labour only to fill the bud box periodically.Brick-making machineK Chandrasekhar, Guntur, Andhra PradeshScout: Palle SrujunaChandrasekhar (53), a landless labourer, who had worked in brick industry since his childhood, has come up with a low-cost, manually-operated brick-making machine to reduce drudgery in the process.BackgroundChandrasekhar was born in a farm labourer’s family. He had to drop out of school after Standard 3 due to a tuberculosis infection and never went back. He is married and has three children. Poor financial conditions of his family made him to work as an agricultural labourer, porter, and in brick-making industry, where he has spent the longest period of his time. Despite economic hardships, he has tried to be creative and innovative all through. He has made a manually-operated sugar cane crusher and manually-operated neem oil extractor. GenesisIn brick industry, the tasks are assigned on a gender basis. Men are engaged in bringing raw material while women are engaged in making bricks by sitting on a small piece of stone. Sitting and working in a squatting posture often causes exposure of women’s body parts sometimes leading to embarrassment in a mixed gender working conditions. Witnessing many such occasions, Chandrasekhar decided to make a machine to reduce drudgery and to enable brick making without the requirement of sitting. The brick-making machineThis is a manual brick-making machine, which has mechanised the process of moulding, removing excess mud and enhancing the productivity. This machine can be operated while standing. Apart from reducing the drudgery, it can also increase the productivity to almost three times the conventional method. It can make 50 bricks at a time as compared to other brick-making machines, which make 10-15 bricks. In the conventional method, a team of six people can make 1,500 bricks in eight hours, which gives them an earning of Rs 1,000-1,500. This machine also requires a team of six labourers for its operation. However, high productivity of machine helps them earn more income i.e. Rs 4,000-5,000 in eight hours’ time. Another social advantage of its design is that child labour, common in the industry, cannot be involved.Modified boiler-based mawa makerSubhash Ola, Alwar, Rajasthan Mawa is an important milk product used in making sweets. It is traditionally prepared by boiling milk until it becomes semi-solid. Subhash Ola (35) has made modifications in the boiler of conventional mawa-making machine, making it energy-efficient.BackgroundThough Subhash was very good in studies, he had to drop out to assist his father. Apart from farming, his father also used to drill borewell. Subhash was initially engaged in borewell digging but later on took up farming and tried his hands at computer assembling as well. He married early and has two daughters and a son. GenesisSubhash saw a boiler-based mawa-making machine at an industry in Jaipur. At that point of time, he was trying to design improved boilers. After interacting with the industry person, he got perturbed by the amount of wood and water consumed in making mawa. That machine used over 100 kg of wood and 4,000 litres of water to make mawa from 100 litres of milk. It also consumed considerable amount of electricity for running chiller pump to condense the waste steam, making the whole process very costly. He started to improve the design of boiler in the mawa-making machine and after almost 10 years of hard work, he successfully developed the improved boiler-based machine in 2009.Modified boiler-based mawa makerIn this mawa maker, the steam circuit (boiler, kadhai, condenser, pipes) has been made as a closed leak-proof design, resulting in better fuel efficiency and minimal wastage. The used steam is also fed to the boiler along with condensate water through gravity. The closed-circuit design stops leakages thereby reducing the additional water requirement (reducing from one tonne per hour to few litres per hour). Also, the wood consumption has reduced drastically by using the redesigned boiler with horizontal fire tubes, preheating of air with flue gases, and recycling of the steam back to boiler without condensation. The water filled in the boiler can be continuously used for a long time, unlike traditional mawa machines where it has to be filled almost every half an hour.The machine has an automated stir. In conventional practice of making mawa in kadhai, continuous stirring is needed to prevent milk fat from sticking to the walls of the vessel. It can process 10-12 kg milk in a single batch with mechanised stirring and unloading of the prepared mawa. This concept can also be used for efficient heating in dairy & food processing, textiles, rubber, plastic industries.Subhash is making machines with capacity ranging from 40 litre/h to 3,000 litre/h (costing Rs 60,000-10 lakh) depending on demand of customers. He has sold over 60 machines in different parts of north India. In all his creative pursuits, his mother has been a continuous source of help though his father believed he was wasting money. Being in a joint family with three siblings also helped as he never had the pressure to make ends meet. A couple of other people also helped him to file a patent and generate resource for his work.Punnathanam Jathy: An improved nutmeg varietyVarkey Thomman, Idukki, KeralaVarkey Thomman (76), a farmer from Idukki district, has developed an extra-large nutmeg variety called Punnathanam Jathy, through selection from a local variety. The youngest among seven siblings, Varkey grew up in an agricultural environment and studied till seventh standard in Kottayam district. Their family migrated to Idukki when he was about 14. The place they shifted to was a forest, with no roads, electricity or other basic facilities. Sometime in 1970s, they got the legal rights to their land by the government. Varkey had to start work at an early age to help his father and other siblings. GenesisAbout 20 years ago, Varkey Thomman developed the Punnathanam nutmeg variety from the local varieties he brought to Idukki, from his grandfather’s farm in their native place. He developed the improved variety. Punnathanam Jathy is an extra-large nutmeg variety developed in 1994 through selection from a local variety and further multiplied by budding. The variety gives nutmegs of extra-large size (4.5 cm long & 3 cm wide). A full-bearing Punnathanam Jathy tree gives an average of 3,000 fruits/tree/year and the weight of 50 dry fruits is 1 kg. So, the weight of 250 dry maces is one kg. There is comparatively less breakage of fruits and the variety is tolerant to pests. The variety is being cultivated organically and requires less maintenance.Indian Institute of Spices Research, Calicut, Kerala & Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Idukki, Kerala confirmed the extra-large size of fruits & nuts, high yield, dark red mace with fully-covered seed and tolerance to pests. It has upright growing habit. The variety has already diffused to Idukki, Ernakulum, Kottayam and Trivandrum districts of Kerala with over 500 saplings being sold. Varkey has a small nursery of Punnathanam Jathy, started about three years ago. The saplings developed from the kernels include both male and female ones. It is his special skill which enables him to select the female samplings, which he sells by visual selection. Varkey says that he is the only farmer in the locality who sells the saplings raised from kernels. He prefers kernel-raised saplings over budded ones because he claims that the kernel-raised trees live longer, even more than 90 years with good yield. Apart from nutmeg, he cultivates black pepper, cocoa and cardamom. He completely follows organic methods for all the crops and uses a special mixture of fertiliser called jaivamrutham. |
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| Volume No. |
HB26(3) & 26(4) 27-33, 2015 |
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