-SIMA CD & RA Chief
At the 45th Annual General Meeting of The SIMA Cotton Development & Research Association (SIMA CD & RA) held on Wednesday at SIMA premises, Coimbatore, Ravichandran, Director of Veejay Yarns & Fabrics Pvt Limited, Venkatramachandran, Managing Director of Laven Technoblend Limited and Sundararaman, Managing Director of Shiva Texyarn Limited were unanimously elected as Chairman, Deputy Chairman and Vice-Chairman respectively for the year 2020-21.
The newly elected Chairman, Ravichandran has 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 & 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 has also 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 says, Ravichandran.
The Central Government has been contemplating to increase the production of high quality Extra Long Staple (ELS) cotton, organic cotton and naturally colored 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.