UP: Female researcher from Barabanki invited by California university for research on citrus fruits

Citrus fruits in the US and Australia are said to have been infected by a disease which has led to a decrease in the productivity, due to which the producers are incurring huge losses. Dr. Pallavi, who qualified for GATE in the year 2011 and CSIR-UGC NET in the year 2012, believes that the production of oranges in Nagpur has also been affected over the years.

Barabanki: Dr. Pallavi Agarwal, a resident of Barabanki, who is engaged in research on straw and making it useful for farmers, has been invited by the University of California in the US for a post doctoral research fellowship on increasing the production and quality of citrus fruits. Dr. Pallavi, Ph.D. in Biosciences, will stay in the US for two years to research citrus fruits, especially oranges, and develop new varieties so that the quality of citrus fruits is maintained.

She will return to India and encourage the cultivation of the said varieties. Talking to ETV Bharat, Dr. Pallavi said that the Citrus fruits in the US and Australia have been infected by a disease that has led to a decrease in productivity, due to which the producers are incurring huge losses. Dr. Pallavi, who qualified for GATE in the year 2011 and CSIR-UGC NET in the year 2012, believes that the production of oranges in Nagpur has also been affected over the years.

She hoped that she will be able to replicate the research back home in India so that the productivity of citrus fruits especially the oranges in Nagpur is increased. "Although there is a research institute in Nagpur, the research is not that active," she said. As for her stubble to manure project, she said the project will have a two-pronged advantage.

"On one hand, the locals will be able to set up the production units and on the other, we will be able to do away with the stubble burning," Dr. Pallavi said. She is currently working as a Project Investigator at the National Botanical Research Institute, Lucknow. From the year 2020, she started working on Parali and started the project of making high-quality manure by grinding stubble by mixing cow dung and Trichoderma in it to make huge pills, which she named "Hygroscopic pellets".

She went to many villages of Barabanki and tested it in the fields. Dr. Pallavi found that farmers can not only get a good yield, but it will also help tackle the drought conditions in the fields. The biggest advantage of the manure will be that farmers will have to burn stubble and there will be no environmental pollution. This project is near the stage of commercialization as Dr. Pallavi will also patent it.