Thelamara village
Photo: Northeast Now

The harvesting and distillation process has been carried out successfully during May 23 – 28 of the CSIR project ‘Aroma Mission’,  using a field distillation unit installed under CSIR’s Aroma Mission project.

The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Govt. of India, had launched the project called ‘Aroma Mission’ at Thelamara village in the Sonitpur district of Assam in October 2017.

The project is expected to help the farmers in boosting their income through cultivation of aromatic crops like lemon grass, citronella, rose, geranium and vetiver, informed  Dr. Rajiv K Doley Chirman of media Cell Tezpur University.

The project was launched covering more than 12 acres of land by Dr. Girish Sahni, Director General, CSIR, and Prof. Anil Kumar Tripathi, Director, CSIR-CIMAP, Lucknow.

The project was initiated for doubling the farmers’ income from their cultivation using the available infrastructure.

The project was launched following a survey and an awareness programme at village Thelamara.

The current market value of the product, i.e., lemongrass and citronella oil, is Rs 1100-1200 per kg. The CSIR-CIMAP has also entered into collaborations with leading industries and manufacturers of fragrance for marketing with an objective of benefiting the farmers.

The project was monitored by Dr. Alok Kalra, Principal Investigator, Aroma Mission and Dr RK Srivastava, Nodal Officer for NER, with technical and logistic support from some faculty members of Tezpur University. It is projected that the mission will cover more areas in the region in coming years, Doley said.

Pranab Kumar Das is Northeast Now Correspondent in Tezpur. He can be reached at: [email protected]