PATNA: An agriculture institute of international standard for research and agri growth is likely to come up at Pusa in Samastipur district. The central government had selected Pusa as one of the centres for opening Norman Borlaug International Research Institute. A high-level team on Thursday visited Pusa in this connection.
The institute is being named after the plant scientist and 1970 Nobel Peace prize winner Norman E Borlaug, who taught the world to feed itself and whose breeding of high-yielding crop varieties helped avert famine that were widely predicted in the 1960s. He died in September last at 95 at Dallas (US).
The proposed institute would exclusively deal in maize and wheat research. It will come up with international funding.
The central team, which visited Pusa on Thursday, included Prof Swapan K Dutta, deputy director general crop sciences at Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR), Ajay Kumar, senior country coordinator of Mexico-based agency CIMMYT, and Dr Sain Dass, director, Maize Research Centre, Pusa campus, New Delhi. They were accompanied by VC of Rajendra Agriculture University, Pusa, M L Chowdhary, agriculture production commissioner A K Sinha and director (agriculture) Dr B Rajender.
After the visit, the team members called on CM Nitish Kumar and apprised him of the requirements that include 500 acres of land for setting up laboratories, developing greenhouse and construction of guesthouses and quarters for staff. They said agriculture scientists of international repute would visit the institute and hold conferences there. An estimated Rs 500 crore is expected to be spent on the entire project. Nitish assured the team of all help from the state government.
Incidentally, Borlaug had visited Pusa in 2001 with then Union agriculture minister Nitish Kumar. Borlaug was widely described as the father of the Green Revolution. Largely because of his work, countries like India and Mexico, which were food deficient, became self-sufficient in producing cereal grains.