One ‘Farmers’ Field Day’ was conducted in the Farmer FIRST Project adopted Haridamada village in Khordha on 7th November, 2025 involving about forty beneficiary as well as non-beneficiary farmers, 4th year B.Sc. (Ag) students from SOA University, project scientists and staff. The participants visited the kharif demonstration fields of HYV varieties namely, ‘CR Dhan 409’ (a shallow lowland rice variety of 160 days duration); ‘CR Dhan 801’ (a medium lowland climate smart rice variety of 145 days duration, resistant to both drought and submergence); and ‘Pooja’ (a shallow lowland fine grain rice variety of 150 days duration) covering an area of about 100 acres in the adopted cluster comprising Haridamada, Jamujhari and Barapita villages. Since, all the varieties were either at reproductive or maturity stages, the students and farmers could clearly observe and critically evaluate the performance of the demonstrated rice varieties vis-à-vis other farmer grown varieties in the cluster with various physical parameters like, plant height, no. of heels/mt2, no. of tillers/heel, no. grains/panicle, diseases-pest infestation, and robustness of crops etc. The students interacted with the farmers and were exposed to water, nutrient and overall crop management practices for getting higher water and crop productivity. All the participants were oriented on maintaining seed purity of harvested crops with proper rouging at critical stages and post-harvest management practices in order to qualify to standard seed production protocols. This would help the farmers to sell the produce as seeds at much higher price (50-100%) over and above the MSP. Besides, the participants also visited the nearby ‘One-acre Natural Farming Model’ demonstration plot with rice variety ‘Kalachampa’. They were exposed to Natural Farming protocols of growing crops like, preparation and application of Beejamrut, Ghanamrut (using fresh dung & urine of indigenous cows, jaggery, live soil etc) for nutrient requirements and Bhahmastra for controlling diseases and pests. Later, the participants were exposed to the demonstrations on ‘Applications of Imaging Drone in Agriculture’ at the nearby ICAR-IIWM Research Farm at Mendhasal. The programme was participated and coordinated by Dr. S.K. Mishra, PS & PI; Dr. D. Sethi, Scientist & Co-PI; Ms. Isha Anindita Sahoo, SRF and Mr. F.K. Pradhan, Field Assistant besides the active participation of farmers and students. Some of the action photographs of the day are given below.
