Now, grow veggies on your rooftop — ICAR-CPRI style

Deepkamal Kaur

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, February 15

Having developed technologies for farmers for potato cultivation all these years, the Central Potato Research Institute of the Indian Council for Agricultural Research here has now come up with a completely diversified training module.

Based at Badshahpur village on Nakodar Road here, the institute has come up with VegFast. Bearing a tagline in Hindi ‘Ghar par ugayein taza khaien’, it is a technology for rooftop vegetable production, for which the institute has even sought patent. Developed by five member agri-business incubator team comprising two engineers Dr Sukhwinder Singh and Dr Brajesh Nare, vegetable scientist Dr Sugani Devi, food technologist Dr Arvind Jaiswal and agriculturist Yogesh Gupta, the much-simplified technique has several new features.

Team head Sukhwinder Singh explains: “In this cost-effective technique, we are planting vegetables in troughs made of iron mesh, which are 7 to 8 inches deep and layered with porous, tightly woven weed mats. A good soil mixture, which is rich in organic manure, and some cocopeat is added to these stands. Then healthy saplings of seasonal vegetables are planted, which can help give the first harvest within 15-20 days. Since production is very speedy because of use of saplings instead of seeds, we got the trademark ‘VegFast’ for it.”

We are providing training and doing their handholding after charging Rs5,000 as licence fee and signing of MoUs. We have established about 15 service providers which are based in Jalandhar, Amritsar, Patiala, Kapurthala, Saharanpur, New Delhi and even Chennai. They have already started running the business in their respective areas and are installing the set up in houses on demand within two hours. —Sukhwinder Singh, Member, Agri-business incubator team, CPRI

The institute, which is giving demonstration to visitors and is also holding online training modules for those interested in the technique for business purposes, is issuing licences to its service providers across the region for running their businesses.

Dr Brajesh Nare showed how troughs have been designed by him in different shapes and sizes, including rectangular, circular, partitioned, in steps and even in several vertical layers for flats and houses with major space constraints. He explains: “The weed mats that we are using are UV-radiated, which ensures a longer life of at least three years. We also layer it with paddy straw before putting in the soil mixture. It has the perfect perforation, which does not allow the soil to pass through and only lets extra water seep down on days, when it rains heavily. Otherwise the troughs are so easily manageable and keep the roofs clean that there is no spillage around it. We even tell service providers to offer iron lines on the top of the troughs, where creepers of vegetables such as gourds, tomatoes can be hung and even plastic sheets to protect the crops in foggy weather as is prevalent these days.”

Dr Jaiswal and Yogesh Gupta showed the troughs installed at the research station, wherein spinach, mustard, fenugreek, soya, radish, lettuce, coriander, tomatoes, strawberries, bitter gourd, capsicum, French beans, broccoli, cauliflower and other vegetables had been sown. He said the troughs were ideal even if some families wanted to set up a herbal garden on the terrace with plantation of Brahmi, tulsi, mint and other medicinal plants.

On how the institute moved towards other vegetables while working solely on potatoes earlier, Sukhwinder Singh said: “It all happened during Covid days. People became health conscious and wary of the use of pesticides and chemicals by farmers in fields. They approached us to help them grow vegetables at home organically. We took special permission for the purpose and finally launched this technology recently after undergoing the required legalities and paperwork for the same.”