PALAKKAD: Twenty years ago, locals suspected that there was something wrong with Sasidharan, who spent hours staring at the paddy fields at sunrise. Regardless of what the locals thought, the wait and hard work of this farmer has finally paid off and is going to be recognized by the scientific world. 55-year-old C Sasidharan, a native of Pulamanthol in Malappuram, is about to become the first farmer in Kerala to develop rice seeds on his own. It is indeed superior to the ones developed by research institutes. He has named his paddy field after her daughter ‘Gopika’.

Sasidharan does not own any land. All his experiments are made on a piece of land on lease. The patent related registration process is in progress at the Intellectual Property Rights Cell of the Union Ministry of Agriculture. The rice, which is grown in more than one acre field, is used for domestic purposes. The rest will be sold to locals. Sasidharan’s family consists of his mother, wife Saraswathy and children Dhanesh, Sanesh, Abhilal and Gopika.

Experimental days

The experiments began on a 30-cent land in 2002. Sasidharan used to sit at the field alone for hours in the morning for the artificial pollination of seeds such as Aishwarya and Jyoti. This continued for many years. Finally, a hybrid species was bred in 2010. In three-and-a-half years, seven crops were cultivated and made into separate varieties of paddy.

Scientists’ intervention

In 2013, Sasidharan sent an application to the National Innovation Foundation, an agency that recognizes farmers' inventions, for a scientific basis. As per their direction, the seeds were given to the Pattambi Rice Research Centre in the University of Agriculture. For three years, paddy farming was done under their supervision with the addition of other crops. Aishwarya, Jyoti, Jaya, indigenous varieties Mahamaya, Uma, CORH-4,5 of Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Sahyadri paddy and Gopika were cultivated in different areas in the same field.