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Bougainvillea varieties with unique names bloom at NBRI, Lucknow
Over 50 varieties, including about two dozen recently developed varieties of colourful Bougainvillaea attracted attention at the Bougainvillea festival cum Flower Krishi Mela in Lucknow.
Wazid Ali Shah, APJ Abdul Kalam and Begum Sikander were some of the innovatively named Bougainvillea varieties on display at the two-day Bougainvillea festival that was inaugurated at the central lawn of CSIR-National Botanical Research Institute (NBRI) in Lucknow on Sunday.
Over 50 varieties including about two dozen recently developed varieties of colourful Bougainvillaea attracted attention at the Bougainvillea festival cum Flower Krishi Mela, that will remain open from 10 am to 5 pm till Monday.
Some Bougainvillea varieties carried different names like ‘Begum Sikander’, Wazid Ali Shah, APJ Abdul Kalam, while some others were named ‘Shubhra’, Arjuna, Archana, Mary Palmer Special, Los Banos Variegata, Aruna. Some other varieties had names like Dr BP Pal, Dr PV Sane.
While the Bougainvillea festival attracted crowd, many farmers, entrepreneurs from states with flower clusters like Maharashtra, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh and U.P. arrived to be part of Flower Krishi Mela that was also organised alongside the flower festival. “The main objective is to disseminate among the farmers, the technology & information on floricultural crops available with the institute so that they can scale up their income through floriculture besides traditional farming,” said KJ Singh, senior scientist and convener of the programme.
“The institute plans to organise second Bougainvillea festival too,” said SK Tewari, chief scientist and garden in- charge, NBRI. He said in that festival, NBRI could allow individuals growing unique variety of Bougainvillea to display their products. As of now Bougainvillea is displayed only by NBRI and nurseries.
Flower cultivation more profitable than conventional farming
Flower cultivation has benefited more farmers than those into conventional farming of rice, wheat, said farmers like Rahul Shukla (Lucknow), Digvijay Singh (Barabanki).
Sachin Rajulkar (Mahrashtra) said he has been cultivating flowers like Marigold, Rajnigandha Galleria and Chrysanthemum and it is profitable because it can be grown twice in a year and can stand extreme weather.
Devesh Chaturvedi, additional chief secretary, agriculture, agriculture education and research was the chief guest. He suggested that crop diversification is essential to increase farmers’ income.
Anand Prakash, vice chancellor, Mahatma Gandhi Central University, Bihar, Bijendra Singh, vice chancellor, Acharya Narendra Dev University of Agricultural & Technology, Ayodhya, were among those present.
