The mission: to bring Israel’s famed desert-farming technologies to the drylands of Purulia.

Last week, officials of West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC) met their counterparts at the WB Food Processing & Horticulture Corp to speed up work on the final draft agreement.

The project was born when Jyoti Basu was Chief Minister and current Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee the WBIDC chairman. The two led a business team to Israel to woo investors.

When asked what the government’s stand was given the party’s in New Delhi, Commerce and Industry Minister Nirupam Sen said: “This project was envisaged long ago and there is no plan of going back on it.”

Sen is also chairman of WBIDC.

The state has kept its ties with Israel alive via Harsh Neotia, the government’s closest industrial partner, who is also the honorary consul for Israel here.

Asked about the party’s reaction in New Delhi, Neotia declined to comment saying this was an issue of “international diplomacy.”

Israel’s Agridev, the partner in the venture, reckons its technology can increase yield per acre of a select group of vegetables 2.5 to 3 times current levels. Plus, the produce would be of higher standards and more suitable for export than what’s locally grown.

Agridev is to set up a demonstration project at the government-owned Hatwara Seed Farm in Purulia, which has vast tracts of arid and idle land. Agridev will be given an acre for the demo farm and the state government will invest Rs 5 crore.

The Israeli company will teach its partners here drip irrigation, fertigation (the combined use of fertilisers and irrigation), and greenhouse technology in which computers monitor temperature and other factors. Israeli officials visit the state regularly to carry out the spadework for the project.