Stunned scientists have begun counting their impending losses: 5253 plants of different varieties of mango and litchi, 6,500 trees more than 30 years old, eight greenhouse nurseries, each with 4000-5000 plants of guava and jackfruit and a gene bank developed over 20 years to have a germplasm base of 239 varieties of mango and litchi.

The Ranchi-based Horticulture and Agro Forestry Research Programme (HARP) — under the aegis of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) — is set to lose all these if the Jharkhand government goes ahead with its plan to acquire land from the institute to build bungalows for over 115 MPs and MLAs.

This also flies in the face of a letter from Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar earlier this year asking Chief Minister Madhu Koda to shelve the plan and instead issue mutation certificate of this land whose title was transferred to the ICAR by the Ranchi Deputy Commissioner in 1976. In 1979, HARP was set up with 100 percent funding by the Union government.

As reported in The Indian Express today, the plan, cleared by the Koda government, envisages taking over more than 288 acres of HARP’s land and slicing away 88 acres (from ICAR’s Farm 2) for the Vidhayal Evam Sansad Grih Nirman Swawlambi Sahkari Samiti Ltd, a housing society registered by the legislators.

‘This will destroy our field laboratory for ever,” says HARP scientist R S Pan. His colleague, senior scientist Vikas Das says: “Our germplasm bank assiduously nourished and grown over the past two decades is the foundation for carrying out our research on the gene order of these varieties. Once we lose Farm 2, we are doomed.”

... contd.