Dr Narayan Chawda

Dr Narayan Chawda (2016)
VNR Seeds Pvt. Ltd., Raipur, Chhattisgarh Dr Narayan Chawda is an Agricultural graduate from SHIATS, Allahabad (formerly AAI). In 1964, he started farming on 8.5 acres of land in village Gomchi near Raipur. Through breeding developed more than 200 high yielding varieties and F1 hybrids of different vegetable crops. He along with some other progressive farmers started a Fair Price Shop in Raipur named as “Naveen Beej Utpadak Sahakari Samiti”. In 1977, he was awarded with “Krishi Pandit” award by Govt. of India. He started learning the modern agricultural practices by visiting different developed countries. He was also among the first few farmers who adopted Drip Irrigation in India and farmers of Chhattisgarh followed him as their role-model. Out of his passion and hard-work of around 15 years, he developed a guava variety, which possesses excellent keeping quality and enabled the farmers of India to grow guava and market it at distant markets. The ASPEE Agricultural Research and Development Foundation, Mumbai conferred him with first ASPEE L.M. Patel Farmer of the Year Award for 1997 and Life Time Achievement Award in 2015. In 2007, Pt. Ravishankar Shukla University, Raipur conferred on him with Doctor of Science, (Honoris causa). He introduced the technology of Vegetable Grafting in India and is commercially producing grafted vegetable seedlings.