Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government has decided to promote agro-entrepreneurship in aromatic culture among farmers, an official said on Friday.

The decision was taken at a high-level meeting chaired by Chief Secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi and attended by Union Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Secretary Arun Kumar Panda.

Panda assured all technical and knowledge support from Fragrance and Flavour Development Centre (FFDC), an autonomous institution working for development and research in aroma industry.

It was decided that a pilot programme would be initiated in Ganjam district for assessing the outcome. It was targeted to start the first phase pilot programme from the month of August 2018 involving around 400 farmers.

The programme would be extended to other coastal and hilly regions of the state on the basis of the outcomes from this pilot project.

The Chief Secretary directed to provide appropriate support to the farmers right from training to cultivation, distillation, quality assessment and marketing linkage within easy access.

Padhi advised FFDC to install common facility centres for distillation and extraction of aroma juice from the crop.

Union MSME secretary advised starting with the aroma plants like vetiver, palmarosa, and kerwa.

He said that marketing tie-up with industries would be made through the support of FFDC under Ministry of MSME and CIMAP, the Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants.

Experts said that the income from cultivation of one acre of palmarosa would be around Rs 35,000 and the income from vetiver per acre would be around Rs 60,000. (IANS)