Patna,(BiharTimes): The United States ambassador to India, Nancy J Powell, on Monday praised Bihar’s GDP and said that access to her country’s technologies and services could help Bihar based companies to make a significant leap in infrastructure and agriculture sector. 

Launching the American Business Corner here on Monday she said that her country wanted Biharis to become full participants in the ever growing bilateral commercial relationships between the two countries. 

She visited the Sabazpura agricultural farm located on the outskirts of Patna on Monday morning to meet various farmers’ groups from different parts of Bihar to know about the changes made in their lives following the application of new technologies in the agri-sector. These technologies are being implemented by the Cereal System Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) project in collaboration with Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR).

These technologies include zero tillage, crop intensification, mechanical transplantation of rice, direct seeding of rice, laser land levelling.

CSISA project is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and USAID. It was started in 2009 to boost crop production to substantially improve rural livelihood. Ten districts of Bihar have been selected. They are Patna, Muzaffarpur, Vaishali, Samastipur, Begusarai, Lakhisarai, Jamui, Nawada, Bhojpur and Buxar.

She interacted with various farmers groups belonging to remote parts of the state. She also met women farming groups from Rajapur in Muzaffarpur district and assessed their role in implementing the best management practices and how they have benefited from new technologies.

R K Malik, the Bihar coordinator of CSISA, explained the best management practices being demonstrated at the farm and how these technologies had helped farmers improve productivity. The demonstrated technologies include mechanical transplantation of rice, laser land levelling and direct seeding of rice.

B P Bhatt, director, ICAR regional centre, eastern region, and Andrew McDonald, country representative, CSISA, were also present on this occasion. 

Later, Powell met governor D Y Patil and chief minister Nitish Kumar.