SIMA CD & RA to focus on ELS & organic cotton

At
the 45th Annual General Meeting of The Southern India Mill’s Association  Cotton Development & Research Association
(SIMA CD & RA) held on December 16, 2020, at
SIMA premises, Coimbatore, R Ravichandran, Director of Veejay Yarns &
Fabrics,
G Venkatramachandran,
MD
of Laven Technoblend and SK Sundararaman, MD of Shiva Texyarn were unanimously
elected as Chairman, Deputy Chairman and Vice-Chairman respectively for the
year 2020-21.

The newly elected Chairman, R Ravichandran stated
that Indian cotton textile industry and cotton farming community have been
facing several challenges on cotton front and SIMA CD & RA has been working
very closely with the State and Central Governments, industry and the farmers
in developing genetically pure cotton seeds and directly supplying to the
farmers. He has stated that SIMA CD & RA have been very active in upgrading
the skills of the cotton farmers across South India especially in Tamil Nadu
for improving productivity, reducing cost of production and improving quality.

The
recently designed and developed Kapas plucker by SIMA has helped the cotton
farmers to produce high quality cotton, reduce their cost of production and
double the net income in all the clusters where massive trials were taken by
Government of Tamilnadu and Cotton Corporation of India said Ravichandran. He
has profusely thanked the Prime Minister, Union Minister of Textiles and Chief
Minister of Tamil Nadu for extending
various schemes and financial support to SIMA CD & RA in the interest of
farmers and the industry.

The
Central Government has been contemplating to increase the production of high
quality Extra Long Staple (ELS) cotton, organic cotton and naturally coloured
cotton under “AtmaNirbhar Bharat Abhiyan” Scheme and involving SIMA CD & RA
in all the Research & Development activities and policy matters relating to
cotton development and recently launched Indian cotton brand “Kasthuri”.  Ravichandran has stated that research team of
SIMA CD & RA is gearing itself to develop various cotton seeds to mitigate
the challenges of BT cotton, herbicide, water scarcity (drought tolerant), high
density, environment protection, water conservation, etc., and successfully
developed several technologies and seeds. 

Shakthi BT and SIMA Platinum (better than SUVIN
and any other international ELS cotton) have been invented by SIMA CD & RA
and they have been recently certified and are ready for commercial
multiplication. SIMA CD & RA Chief has added that Cotton Corporation of
India (CCI), SIMA CD & RA and Confederation of Indian Textile Industry
Cotton Development & Research Association (CITI CD & RA) have
successfully conducted the ELS cotton trials in the States of Rajasthan, Madhya
Pradesh, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu and
planning to multiply the areas. SIMA CD & RA has also identified farmers
and necessary areas for multiplying the pure organic cotton under contract
farming in the coming season and few leading mills have already come forward to
venture into this pilot project. 

SIMA
CD & RA Chief has stated that the association has already developed brown-coloured
and green-coloured cotton seeds, among which the former variety is ready for
commercial multiplication. The naturally coloured cotton will be organic and an
ultimate solution for textile processing. The naturally coloured cotton would
also be more skin friendly and would have sustained physical and chemical
properties and therefore would have tremendous market opportunities.
Ravichandran has stated that the corporate companies intend to support cotton
farmers through CSR may contact the association as the commercial
multiplication would need three to five years in holding support for the
farmers and the R&D activities.

SIMA
CD&RA Chief have appealed to the PM to launch Technology Mission on Cotton
2.0 to increase the yield from 500 kg per hectare to 750 kg per hectare in the
next five years and adopt various technologies to double the farmers’ income
and sustain the same without MSP operations.