World Coconut day celebrated

    Coconut is the state fruit of Goa and a life supporting species in the fragile coastal and island ecosystems. Every year coconut related research, development and farmer organisations celebrate on 2 September as the world coconut day remembering the foundation of Asia Pacific Coconut Community now upgraded as International Coconut community at Jakarta Indonesia. On 02 Sep 2021 world coconut day was celebrated at ICAR-CCARI Old Goa by All India Coordinated Research Project (AICRP) on Palms –Goa centre and Schedule Tribe Component (STC) of ICAR-CCARI. During the event ten tribal farmers, farm workers, padelis of Cotigao village panchayat, eight tribal farmers, farm workers, padelis of Indrawada, Gaodongrim village and one padeli from Ponda participated in the event. A demo of use of coconut climbing device was organised at the AICRP (Palms) unit of B block of experimental field of the campus. All the participants practised using the device and clarified their doubts on the usage and maintenance. A formal distribution program was conducted at Dr AR Bhattacharya farmers exhibition hall where all the 19 participants received one coconut climbing device each free of cost under Schedule Tribe Component of ICAR-CCARI.

    Dr Parveen Kumar, Director ICAR-CCARI chaired the meeting and briefed the participants about the World Coconut day genesis and importance of coconut in sustainable livelihoods of coconut growers and health of consumers. He also stressed the need for improving productivity of coconut, enhance the value addition of coconut based products and improve the diversification of coconut gardens by intercropping practices. Mr Umesh Gaonkar Sarpanch of Cotigao village panchayat volunteered the event by local support of Cotigao villagers and also graced occasion.

    Dr V Arunachalam, Principal Scientist (Horticulture) and Scientist in charge AICRP (Palms) Goa centre, organised the event and arranged the climbing devices under STC program.