Horticulture stakeholders' meet organized by AAU held in Kahikuchi

A CORRESPONDENT

PALASBARI: The Horticultural Research Station (HRS), Assam Agricultural University (AAU), organized a meeting with the stakeholders in the conference hall of the institution's Kahikuchi campus on Saturday.

The meeting focussed on various ways for the expansion of cocoa as a mixed crop in the areca nut plantation (Homestead Garden) and also on the home-scale processing of cocoa powder and chocolate preparation in the AAU HRS-promoted AGAG, Sonapur cluster including Rongdoloi gaon, Bhum gaon, Luri gaon; Bengpung gaon of Nartap Gaon Panchayat of Dimoria Block in Sonapur.

Earlier on the occasion, Dr Sarat Saikia, Chief Scientist of HRS, AAU welcomed the house and also briefed the dignitaries on the objective of the interaction session among the personnel and experts AAU, HRS scientists, agripreneurs and SBI Agribusiness units (ABU), local head office, FPC representative and cocoa farmers.

This was followed by having a brief self-introduction session among the participating stakeholders followed by a presentation on cocoa as mixed crop in areca nut plantations (Homestead Garden) and home-scale processing for Cocoa powder and chocolate preparation by Sanjay Changkakaty, Secretary, North East Organic.

As a stakeholder of the AGAG initiative of the Sonapur cluster, and also as the representative officer of the local head office of SBI ABU, Adaha Nepuni, showed interest to finance the Cocoa project by the ABU of SBI and therefore requested the AAU - HRS, Kahikuchi along with NE Organic — a pioneer of cocoa plantation since 2017 — to become the technical input provider for the determination of the scale of finance of cocoa so that the SBI could place the proposal in the scale of finance for the approval of the State-level technical committee. She also discussed about KCC and term loan procedures in the agribusiness sector to disseminate information among the farming community or agripreneurs by this stakeholders team.

In this interaction session, representatives of the North East Organic and the Tetelia Agroproducer company Pvt. Ltd. along with the farmers' representative of Chocolate Village under North East Organics also provided the requisite inputs.

Among the participating stakeholders of this interaction session were the president and the secretary of North East

Organics; the CEO of Tetelia Agro Producer Company Pvt. Ltd., Khetri and Sonapur as well as the scientists of AGAG, Sonapur cluster and also of AICRP (Palm), in-charge of AGAG, HRS, AAU centre plantation block of HRS, AAU, Kahikuchi.

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