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.