Patna: Hills of Rajgir, Nawada and Gaya will look more healthier and greener in coming months. Apart from the routine plantation drive, the forest department has for the first time decided to airdrop specially prepared seed balls to grow plants in the inaccessible areas of the hills through chopper or drones.
Minister, department of environment, forest and climate change (DoEFCC), Prem Kumar said that the department has proposed air dropping of around 1 lakh seed balls on the hills of Rajgir, Nawada and Gaya as part of the initiative to enhance green cover. “The seed balls, containing seeds of guava, mango, banyan, peepal, neem, etc, will be dropped in the zones that have lesser number of trees. The exercise will begin in the 3rd week of July,” said the minister.
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A senior officer of the department said that the seed balls are prepared by special machines. “These balls are processed with cover of clay and other nutrients in such way that seeds sprout up with little amount of rain and become plants in the next three-four months. Each ball has hundreds of seeds of various plants,” he explained.
The DoEFCC has proposed purchasing of machines which prepare seed balls. These machines are capable of preparing around 1000 seed balls in an hour. As per plan, the department has proposed dropping of around 10 lakh seed balls in the next three years on various hills of other districts in phases. Hills of Sasaram, Kaimur, Bettiah, etc., will be covered in the next three years.
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The minister said that the department was working on an ambitious scheme to widen the green cover of the state from 15-20 percent in the next five years. “Trial of the project will be carried out on Dungeshwari, Bramhyoni, Ramshila and Pretshila hills in Gaya and Barabar hills in Jehanabad,” said Kumar, adding that machines to prepare seed balls will be sent to different forest divisions up on the success of pilot project.
Kumar said that seed ball experiments had been tried and tested in many other regions of the country. “Plants grown from seed balls don’t require any special care. They adopt the plant behaviour of the surroundings and have the capability to fight changes in weather. Plants sprouted up from seed balls grow in size of two-feet in three-four months and have high rate of survival,” added the minister.
