Saturday, September 2 2006 12:09 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Noting that the country is facing problems of frequent drought conditions, low temperature spells and lot of salt affected areas, President A P J Abdul Kalam yesterday (Sept 1, 2006) said there is need to search for genes too vercome these problems by developing stress tolerant crop varieties.

"There are host of plant diseases and insects. The pest resistant genes for various biotic stresses can be a big boon to the farmers and boost agriculture production substantially," he said inaugurating the Dr B P Pal Birth Centenary Symposium on 'Search for New Genes' at the National Agriculture Science Centre Complex here.



Kalam said that for the country to be competitive in the international market, higher return per unit input in farming has become mandatory.

Indian crops are known to have poor productivity.

"In my opinion search for genes for higher productivity can help the nation to a very large extent," he said.



The President said it was necessary to add value to the agriculture produce to ensure adequate return to the growers.

He said genes can play a very great role in value addition to agriculture crops particularly the vegetables, fruits, flowers and other perishables.

"This value addition could be in the form of extension of shelf life of horticulture produce by exploiting appropriate genes. This combined with food processing can save the nation 25-35 per cent of the crop losses in horticulture," he added.