Centre of excellence to be developed at Mati Tirtha

The state government has decided to develop a centre of excellence at Mati Tirtha in Burdwan. It may be mentioned that an Agriculture College has been set up near Mati Tirtha recently which would turn to a university in future. 

Agro scientist from across the globe will be visiting the centre of excellence to take lessons. Initiatives have also been taken for better research work and facilities will be provided to students to work along with farmers in Mati Tirtha as well. 

Students can implement their “new ideas” when they will get to do field work in Mati Tirtha. Steps will also be taken to organise regular activities in the centre of excellence in Mati Tirtha which has come up on a plot of 15 acre.

Projects starting from rain harvesting, horticulture, fishery and animal husbandry would be the topic of discussion in the centre of excellence and there will be workshops on the same on regular basis.

It may be mentioned that Mati Tirtha is a dream project of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and she had taken the initiative to set it up to help farmers know new methods and technologies of farming. 

It is learnt that steps would be taken to organise training camps for farmers and an administrative building will also come up to monitor the projects in Mati Tirtha.

It has also been discussed in Nabanna in a meeting on Thursday that food process projects will be undertaken on public private partnership model as it would help in introduction of modern technologies.

A preliminary discussion in this regard with the Indian National Chamber of Commerce has already 

taken place. Moreover, the state government has already introduced 30 air-conditioned vehicles to transport vegetables and 25 more for fishes.

Steps have been taken to bring in 50 more similar vehicles. The vehicles helps in minimising the loss of a farmer as chances of vegetables or fishes getting damage while transporting went down. The fish cultivation in the state is 16.50 lakh metric tonne while the demand is 17.2 lakh metric tonne. Thus a target of producing 18 lakh metric tonne has been set.