Anand Maneklal Patel (50) is a progressive farmer and community representative for Pallichilli variety cultivating chilli, cotton, castor and wheat crops. He is an active member of the farming community of his village and believes in progress through shared effort. 

The variety was traditionallycultivated in the Rupal village, Gandhinagar Gujarat. Forthe last five decades, thefarmers of the villagehave been cultivating and conserving it. The collective efforts of the farmers’community played an important role in the varietal conservation, and improvement through the mass selection method. Every year, the phenotypically similar desirable healthy plants with uniform fruits were selected for seed production based on specific traits of fruit i.e. yield, fruit length, bright red coloured fruits, and disease-freeplants. At present, the community of more than 100 farmers in the village cultivates and maintains the quality and genetic purity of the variety. The variety was unanimously named as "Palli" by the community in honour of the famous rituals of Palkhi locally known as Palli, performed for the Goddess Vardayinimata, the local deity of the village.

The variety is characterized by a high yield of green and dried chilli fruits (Green: up to 25t/ha, dried: 4t/ha)with attractive bright glossy red and uniform 17-18cm long fruits. The fruits are moderately pungent and showed tolerance to major insect pests and diseases. 

The variety was evaluated by S.K.N. Agriculture University, Rajasthan during Rabi 2020-21 under Jaipur (Rajasthan) conditions. The variety ‘Palli’produced longer fruits with higher average fruit weight than all the reference varieties. The variety recorded a significantly superior yield of Green (22 t/ha), Red (16.7 t/ha) and dried red (3.7 t/ha) fruits over national (Pusa Jwala), state (RCh-1) and local checks. 

This dual-purpose variety was tested for the value-added productsand fruit processing quality traits at Anand Agricultural University, Anand, Gujarat. Palli variety was found to be suitable forsuperiorqualitychillisauce and chutney and has good market potential in FMGC sector.The on-farm trials of the variety were facilitated by NIF in West Bengal, Maharashtra and Gujarat states. The varietyoutperformedover other popular varieties in terms of bright red-coloured lengthy fruits and better yieldsat all the locations tested.