Hom Prasad Chauhan(43),is an innovative farmer from the South Sikkim district involved in Agriculture. He has studied until class 10th and uses local plants to manage various insects and diseases. He has developed an herbal preparation for managing leaf curl disease in chilli.

He has developed a fermented herbal preparation using three indigenous plants (Name withheld due to IP reasons) to control leaf curl disease and insect pests of chilli- whitefly and thrips. The preparation can be stored for up to two months. Hom Prasad has used this preparation for a decade to manage sucking pests and leaf curl disease in chilli.

Facilitated by NIF, the validation trials of the preparation were conducted at the Department of Plant Pathology, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, Punjab, against the leaf curl disease of chilli. The preparation was very effective in managing leaf-curl disease in chilli, causing a reduction in both disease incidence and disease severity at all doses tested.

The dose-dependent reduction in the whitefly population in the range of 53.0 - 75.8 %, as compared to control was reported.The preparation also reduced the thrips population,where maximum decrease was recorded during the third spray with 34.8 %, -55.8 % reduction.The preparation was most effective in increasing yield resulting in 8.76%, 20.24 % and 47.2% increase in yield at the 3 doses tested compared to untreated control. The preparation was safe for non-target and beneficial insects and did not cause any phytotoxicity to the crop.