Food in sight

Ranchi, June 26: The Birsa Agriculture University (BAU) has come up with a magic wand — bamboo plants — to keep elephants at bay from human habitations.

The varsity has done tissue culture of a bamboo species which, it believes, could check the pachyderm menace in the state if planted in forests. Borrowed from the Northeast, the dandro calamus asper — a kind of soft plant belonging to the bamboo family — is liked by elephants who eat them with joy.

“As dandro calamus asper is soft, elephants consume it as a sumptuous food,” said Z.A. Hyder, the associate dean of BAU.

He said if dandro calamus asper is planted in forest areas, the elephants would not stray into the villages and create havoc as they would get enough food of their choice in their habitat itself.

After having brought the bamboo species from Assam, BAU is trying to multiply the variety and grow it in Jharkhand. The university is growing two lakh saplings of this variety of bamboo through tissue culture in different nurseries.

The tissues of the dandro calamus asper are being multiplied in the nurseries of Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Dhanbad, and Krishi Vigyan Kendra at Darisai (near Jamshedpur) apart from the nursery in BAU. The task of developing the plant tissues has been given to the College of Biotechnology of BAU.

According to the associate dean of the varsity, the state government has asked BAU to grow and supply as many as 10 lakh bamboo saplings of various kinds brought from the Northeast.

Apart from the dandro calamus asper variety, it is also growing four other kinds — dandro hemiltoni, babusa tulda, bambusa vulgaris and bambusa nutiaus.

The pachyderm menace in rural Jharkhand is so intense that villagers adopt various kinds of methods to chase away the elephants. Recently, villagers of Bero region bought two camels from Rajasthan to keep tuskers at bay.