“We all started the day with breakfast in ICRISAT at 7 a.m. However, many of us were awake by 5 a.m., still feeling the 10.5 hour time change. We left ICRISAT at 8 a.m. for an “exciting” drive to CRIDA. During the journey, we quickly understood the saying, “Americans drive on the ride side, the British drive on the left side, and Indians drive on the sui-cide.” While it was a bit hectic, to say the least, we all were fascinated with observing the activity in the urban landscape at morning rush hour.
At CRIDA we were warmly greeted and enjoyed observing their research in the areas of agronomy, plant pathology, entomology, plant breeding, and biotechnology. We also visited their field trial experiments. Highlights of the field tour included observing a bicycle-powered dye extractor for indigo leaves, testing tamarind fruit, observing henna plants that provide the natural dye for the tattoos we got the previous night, and looking at Jatropha, a crop being utilized for biodiesel.
After our tour, we enjoyed an excellent meal at CRIDA. During lunch, our Indian friends taught us the proper way to mix the multiple dishes with the rice as well as eat these delicious concoctions …. with right hands only!
We returned to ICRISAT after lunch. It was another “riveting” drive—quite literally— that included a minor fender bender between our chartered bus and a car. Damages seemed to get settled on the spot, in the street, between drivers, Indian style.
We are looking forward to learning to play cricket with our Indian friends.”
Elliot Heffner, Cornell grad student, plant breeding
Animal Sciences
Date – 4 Jan
Student –Krystal Allen
After breakfast the group boarded a bus and traveled to the Blue Cross of Hyderabad, an animal rescue center. We were greeted by Mrs Meghan Connolly, whose daughter founded the Blue Cross 15 years ago. Mrs Connolly gave us a tour of the center’s various buildings and wards which sat atop a hillside overlooking Hyderabad. She also described to us the center’s three corollaries: No kill policy, funding and public education / outreach. We were all very impressed with the shelter and the admirable work being done by its staff. After the tour we were able to meet and speak with the founder and the three on staff veterinarians
At Blue cross of Hyderabad with shelter director Mrs. Meghan Connolly.
Next we went to lunch in Banjara Hills at a restaurant called Barbique Nation and took some time to shop at a local mall before heading back to ICRISAT. We then had the opportunity to listen to Mr. Vijay Mahajan give a talk about his microfinance institution, Basix and India’s rural economy. Mr Mahajan stressed that simply having money available for loaning to small farmers was not enough to improve their situation, rather a solution would require a multi faceted approach including, among other things, insurance against crop failure and other losses. That evening we had dinner in the open air surrounding the gazebo and our small group met to discuss potential topics for our final paper. All in all we had a wonderful day filled with excellent educational experiences
Value Addition for sweet sorghum
(4th January 2008)
Today we had visited to Rusni distilleries. We had a chance to know about the patented project of producing ethanol from Sweet Sorghum and also from grains like rice and maize .The plant production capacity is exactly 40000 liters/day Mr.Madhu , Assistant manager of this company explained us about the concern and the project. They procure sweet sorghum through contract farming system and then process it. They are following different process for sweet sorghum and grains. We saw the equipments involved in processing and collect the information regarding processing techniques. They produce three types of alcohol pharmaceuticals, Fuel and portable purpose. In the pleasant evening, all the three groups shared our today's learning and had a discussion on it. At last, we had a lecture on India's Rural economy by Mr. Vijay Mahajan Managing director of basix. From this lecture, we had gained the knowledge on Rural India growth in past and present and prospects of the growth and also known about the mission of basix to promote a larger number of sustainable livelihoods through the micro financing system.
Reported by Jenney Pandian and Pannee chuennakorn |
