ICAR-Directorate of Weed Research, Jabalpur, organized an Awareness program on Mission LiFE (Lifestyle for Environment) with students and faculties from Wings Convent School, Maharajpur, Adhartal on 29 April, 2024 under the theme ‘Land restoration, desertification and drought resilience’. On this occasion, Dr. J. S. Mishra, Director, ICAR-DWR highlighted the major themes of LiFE such as save water, save energy, no to single use plastics, adopt sustainable food system, reduce waste, adopt healthy life style and reduce e-waste. He said that all of us can directly or indirectly contribute towards environment restoration, simply by including millets as a component of our food habit. Besides providing health benefits, this will also reduce the water requirement for agricultural production. He further suggested that the students can play major role in preventing environmental pollution by convincing their parents to use cotton/jute bags and avoid polybags from shopkeepers for daily marketing.

Shri Rajeev Singh, Director, Wings Convent School remarked that this kind of awareness program is very useful to widen the vision of students about the importance of healthy environment for our well-being. He also urged the teachers of the school to passively contribute towards the environmental cause through short stories/narrations. Earlier, Dr. K. K. Barman, Principal Scientist and the program coordinator, narrated in brief the background of celebrating World Environment Day with emphasis on this year’s theme. He also highlighted the salient principles of natural farming technology.

In the programme, Dr. R. P. Dubey, sensitized about the importance of climate resilient crops like millets for sustainable utilization of arable lands. Dr. V. K. Choudhary, Sr. Scientist talked about smart agriculture, its role in minimizing waste from agricultural inputs and thereby preventing environmental pollution. Dr. Surabhi Hota, Scientist and co-coordinator of the program talked about techniques of soil health management and land restoration. Dr. Himanshu Mahawar, Scientist and co-coordinator narrated about the utilization of waste to make wealth through art of composting. Finally, there was interaction session wherein the various queries from the students pertaining to program theme were addressed by the scientists. The program ended with a formal vote of thanks by Dr. Mahawar.