Awareness programme on harmful effects of Parthenium held

Bhubaneswar: A programme to create awareness about the harmful effects of Parthenium hysterophorus, a noxious weed which invades farmlands causing huge loss to crop yield, was organised by the Institute of Agricultural Sciences (IAS), faculty of agricultural sciences of Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (SOA), on Saturday.

The programme was jointly organised by IAS, the NSS wing of SOA and Indian Society of Weed Sciences with the students and faculty members participating. Prof. Prabhat Kumar Roul, Director of the state-run Agricultural Promotion and Investment Corporation of Odisha Ltd (APICOL), Prof. Bijay Kumar Sahu, Dean of IAS, Prof. Jyoti Ranjan Das, Dean (Students’ Welfare) and faculty Prof. Saroj Kumar Mohanty attended the programme.

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The students took out a rally from IAS campus and proceeded up to APJ Abdul Kalam Park and Kalinga Nagar (K-8) while members of the Residents’ Welfare Association and Senior Citizens’ Forum destroyed parthenium shrubs after identifying the same on the roadside and inside the park.

Dr. Subhaprada Dash, faculty of IAS, explained to the students the harmful effects of the weed. The participants in the programme, organised to mark the Parthenium Awareness Week which began on August 16, included Dr. Anshuman Jena, Dr. Kaushik Sar, Dr. Jagdish Jena, Kumar Sambhab Giri, Sweta Rath, Subham Acharya, Rakesh Roshan Satpathy, Sandeep Singh, Rajib Behera, Diptanu Dutta, Siddhartha Panda and Chinmayee Behera.

A separate awareness programme was also conducted at Chhatabar on the outskirts of the Capital City where the dangers posed by parthenium weed to crops as also to human health was explained to farmers. Prof. Saroj Kumar Mohanty and Dr. Subhaprada Dash conducted the programme as Coordinator and Associate Coordinator respectively.