Rajasthan’s first weed museum to come up in Jaipur

JAIPUR: For the first time in the state, a ‘weed museum’ will be inaugurated at Rajasthan Agricultural Research Institute (RARI), Durgapura, Jaipur.
The concept of weed museum has been proposed wherein preserved samples of weeds can be displayed for the general public and farmers, to help them with timely identification to protect their crops.
In the Durgapura weed museum, 100 preserved weed samples are displayed in the herbarium boxes.The museum also displays posters of the major kharif, rabi as well as noxious weeds of zone III (a) that includes Jaipur, Ajmer, Tonk and Dausa. Posters show the photographs of different parts of the weeds and their basic information.
Weeds are a perennial problem for the farmers in the state. These are additional plants that are omnipresent and reduce yield and quality of crops substantially. Farmers spend a lot of resources to reduce their impact, at times unsuccessfully. The major hindrance for the farmers in weed management is the identification of weeds.
Farmers are unable to identify the weeds and that’s why they don’t use appropriate methods for its control. Moreover, they identify the weed with their local names, which becomes difficult for agricultural workers to correlate it with their scientific names.
Surendra Singh, professor of Agronomy at Rajasthan Agricultural Research Institute (RARI), Durgapura and the principal co-ordinator of the weed museum explained, “In recent years, climate change has become a major bottleneck for sustainable crop production in the country. On the one hand, rising temperature is affecting productivity of different crops in whole of northern India and on the other hand, some new weed species are emerging. Some new emerging weeds are still unidentified. With the help of this museum, we are trying to create awareness among farmers. At present, we are focusing on weeds in Jaipur and its nearby cities. Later, more weed museums can be opened.”
Shweta Gupta, assistant professor at RARI, Durgapura said, the collection of these weeds was extremely difficult and a tedious job.
“It took 1.5 years to collect these 100 weeds and prepare their herbarium for display. One weed’s preserved sample took around 8-10 days with the help of herbarium press. Sometimes, due to high moisture content in the fresh weed sample, weed samples got contaminated due to fungus and the sample was destroyed. Then again, the same process was repeated. The end result is satisfactory and by the end of next month, this museum will be opened for public,” said Shweta.