Trivandrum: The Millet Festival, highlighting the huge scope of millets in ensuring global food security and India’s potential to emerge as a millet cultivation and value-addition hub, will be the key feature of the six-day ‘One Week One Lab (OWOL)’ programme of CSIR-NIIST that gets underway here from March 13.
The first such initiative, OWOL seeks to showcase the achievements of major research projects of each of the 37 laboratories of CSIR and their application for social and economic development touching diverse domains.
As part of OWOL, CSIR-National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology (CSIR-NIIST), a constituent laboratory of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Ministry of Science and Technology, Govt of India, has also planned a series of high-profile seminars featuring top scientists, technocrats and administrators at its campus at Pappanamcode in the city.
Dr N Kalaiselvi, Director General, CSIR and Secretary, DSIR will inaugurate the OWOL programme at the CSIR-NIIST campus on March 13 at 12.30 pm. Prof Javed Iqbar, Chairman of CSIR-NIIST Research Council, will be the Guest of Honour.
The Millet Festival is aimed at promoting the cultivation, value-addition and consumption of millets across the country, coinciding with the decision of the United Nations to observe 2023 as the International Year of Millets (IYM), as proposed by India.
A conclave, planned as part of the Millet Festival, will focus on strategies to showcase millets grown in different parts of the country and their value-added products on global platforms. Scientists, scholars, planners and subject experts participating in the conclave will identify areas of focussed activities to promote the cultivation of millets, value-addition and popularise consumption of millet-based products for a healthy life.
Top scientists, technocrats and administrators from major institutions across the country will attend a series of seminars at the event in a bid to explore ways of effectively leveraging the fruits of scientific and technological research yielded by the national institution for the well-being of the society. The high-profile deliberations will cover a wide spectrum of live topics relating to the agricultural, environmental and defence sectors as part of the OWOL programme launched by the Government of India.