There was a revival of rice cultivation in the khazans of Cortalim and Amona-Bicholim in 2017, as also in Santo Esteavao and Colvale-Chicalim in 2018, to upgradation of transplanting technology in Curtorim in 2022, and the exponential growth in Chinchinim, the face of rice cultivation, is seeing a revival that could not be imagined during the previous three decades.
It needed a change of narrative from the oft repeated: ‘Rice cultivation is not economical.’ The same thing was said about mushroom cultivation in Goa. Now, both have been proved wrong.
Big changes often have small beginnings. Goans are familiar with the collection and eating of ollmi, the mushrooms of different species of the Termitomyces fungus. No one in the world knows how to grow them: that is a technology known only to the termites and the fungus itself.
The Indian Institute of Horticulture Research (IIHR of ICAR) at Hessarghatta had a ‘Mushroom Laboratory’ where Oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus sajor caju), egg-shaped paddy straw mushroom Volvariella volacea; milky white mushrooms (Calocybe indica) and other species were cultivated.
Goans are familiar with the collection and eating of ollmi, the mushrooms of different species of the Termitomyces fungus.
When I graduated and came home (to Goa) from Bangalore in 1982, two bottles of oyster mushroom spawn were a part of my ‘transfer of residence’ baggage.
In 1985, Nelson Figueiredo and I began our experiments on growing mushrooms and also multiplying spawn (the ‘seed’ is actually mycelium fragments) using a pressure cooker instead of an autoclave. We did public demonstrations and training for farmers and youth.
By the time a mushroom lab was set up in 1994 at the Agriculture Farm, Ela-Old Goa, Dr Sangam Kurade had setup a commercial unit for producing ‘button mushrooms’ (Agaricus bisporus) every day, round the year in Goa
The reason I can debunk the narrative that ‘the Termitomyces mushrooms or ollmi will become extinct’, if harvested and eaten, is because I know that mushroom do not multiply by spores alone!
Doomsday preachers are there in every field. There are ‘leaders’ who predicted in 2004 that Konkani in Roman script would die in twenty years. Both, the self-appointed ‘experts’ and Konkani in Roman script, are alive and well in 2024! We should not believe these false narratives.
The narrative for three decades since 1985 was that it was not feasible to set up an agriculture college in Goa. (That may be the case with engineering colleges that have no takers for 300 seats this year).
We changed that and the government of Goa approved the setting up of the first agriculture college in March, 2015. It was set up in August, 2015.
Priyanka Prakash Parab was one of the first applicants for the course. Today, Priyanka has many reasons to celebrate her birthday. Not only has she been the Treasurer of the Botanical Society of Goa since her birthday in 2019, but she has also helped her husband, Vandit Naik, to bag the prestigious Krishi Ratna award. Both are home-grown agriculture graduates from Sulcorna, South Goa.
Some of their batchmates and juniors are teaching agriculture all over Goa, including their proxy alma mater.
Since September, 2022, their alma mater was merged with the Goa College of Agriculture (GCA)-Ela, under SAMETI, a registered society that is now establishing a veterinary college at the Cattle Breeding Farm, Kopardem-Sattari, this year.
(The author is the former Chairman of the GCCI Agriculture Committee, CEO of Planter's Choice Pvt Ltd, Additional Director of OFAI and Garden Superintendent of Goa University, and has edited 18 books for Goa & Konkan)