3 farm scientists to get award for developing bottle fly trap

SHIMLA: The State Innovation Council SIC that met here today under Chief Secretary P Mitra today approved the innovation award in the agriculture sector to three scientists Dr PK Mehta Dr Pankaj Sood and Dr CS Prabhakar of the Department of Entomology HP Agricultural University Palampur for developing the genericbased bottle trap for controlling fruit flies

Updated At : 05:39 AM Dec 10, 2015 IST

Tribune News Service

Shimla, December 9

The State Innovation Council (SIC) that met here today under Chief Secretary P Mitra today approved the innovation award in the agriculture sector to three scientists - Dr PK Mehta, Dr Pankaj Sood and Dr CS Prabhakar of the Department of Entomology, HP Agricultural University, Palampur, for developing the generic-based bottle trap for controlling fruit flies. The council also approved two more awards to other sectors as well.

This bottle trap has helped farmers in saving their crops against the attack of fruit flies without using chemicals and with a little cost of about Rs 100 per trap.

Besides, the council reviewed and approved the schemes worth Rs 2 crore funded from the State Innovation Fund during the last three years, stated the official release here today.

The council also approved the innovations recommended by the sectoral committees for award under the HP State Innovation Award Scheme 2014-15. As many as 27 proposals were received by the council out of which it approved innovation awards in three sectors - agriculture and horticulture, academic and social development.

The award under the academic sector was approved for innovation in pocket-sized guidelines “Himachal Pradesh ke Jilon ke liye Bhukamp Pratirodi Gair Engineering Bhawan Nirman Marg Nirdeshika” prepared by Dr Hemant Kumar Vinayak, an assistant professor, civil engineering, NIT, Hamirpur.

He developed specific non-engineering guidelines for earthquake safe construction that can be used by masons and other skilled or semi-skilled workers during construction work.

The council also approved another award for the low-cost bio-sand filter of Dr Anil Sharma, director, Social Awareness Through Human Involvement (SATHI), an NGO, which has developed bio-sand filter cost effective technology for domestic water filtration. This technology has resulted in a significant reduction in the rate of water-borne diseases in certain rural pockets of Sirmaur district.

The Chief Secretary said the last date of nominations for HP Innovation Awards for 2015-16 had been extended up to March 31.