The first Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK) of A&N Group of Islands under Zone – II, Kolkata was established in 1993 under the administrative control of Central Agricultural Research Institute (CARI), Port Blair. It is one of the innovative institutions with the mandate of imparting vocational training to the practicing farmers including, farm women, youth and extension functionaries in improved technologies in the field of agriculture, horticulture, animal husbandry, fisheries and other allied enterprises. It has additional responsibilities of testing and refining the developed technologies and also to conduct front line demonstrations of new technologies in the farmer’s field. The KVK of CARI is situated adjacent to Andaman Trunk Road (ATR) at Sippighat, which is about 7 Kms away from the Host Institute (CARI) and 16Kms from the Port Blair city.

Mandate

• Conducting ‘On farm testing’ for identifying technologies in terms of location specific sustainable land use system.
• Organize trainings to update the extension personnel with emerging advance in Agriculture Research on regular basis.
• Organize short and long term vocational training courses in agriculture and allied vocations for the farmers and rural youths with emphasis on "learning by doing" for higher production on farmers and generating self employment.
• Organize Front line demonstration (FLD) on various crops to generate production data and feed back information.

Services

Training for Target Group (s)

During period under report a total number of 800 training programmes (vocational and in-service) were conducted of which 279 were of ON campus and 521 OFF campus by the SMS of Agronomy/Extension, Fisheries, Horticulture, Animal Sciences, Home Science, Farm agro forestry, Agricultural Engineering faculties. The target groups training were farmers (9125), rural youth (4316) and the extension functionaries (1339) utilizing a total trainee day of 63182.The training programmes were conducted OFF and ON campus in nature, ranging between three days to three months in durations. Before its execution of training programs were planned with the involvement of the Scientists of Institute and officials of the Development Departments of A&N Administration, to have an integrated and holistic approach. While imparting the training, the principles of ‘Teaching by doing’ and ‘Learning by doing’ were thoroughly followed with an objective to have a desirable change in knowledge, skill and attitude improvements. The major training programmes undertaken by the respective faculties was on MAT nursery and SRI methods on paddy, oilseeds and pulses production technology, floriculture, nursery raising techniques, plant propagation methods, traditional and non-traditional vegetable cultivation methods, multi-tier cropping system methods, backyard poultry farming practices, goatery, piggery, duck farming, fodder cultivation, quail rearing, composite fish culture, integrated fish farming, brackish water fish farming, ornamental fish culture, crab culture, duck cum fish farming, tailoring, pickle making, value added products, mushroom cultivation, vermicompost.