Context: Integrated Aroma Dairy Entrepreneurship for Jammu & Kashmir has been proposed to augment the income of farmers.
Key Highlights

• Jammu & Kashmir has abundant stock of Animal Husbandry and Dairy resources.
• The resources can be effectively integrated with Aroma Mission which was launched in J&K by Council of scientific and Industrial Research.
• It will pave the way for integrated Aroma Dairy Entrepreneurship, ensuring sustainable growth, increased income, and fresh avenues of livelihood for farmers.
• The focus will be on productivity rather than production.

What is Mission Aroma?

• The CSIR Aroma Mission is envisaged to bring transformative change in the aroma sector through desired interventions in the areas of agriculture, processing, and product development for the growth of aroma industry and rural employment.
• It will promote the cultivation of aromatic crops for essential oils that are in great demand by the aroma industry.

Launch: 2016
Aim: To develop superior aroma crop varieties and their Agro-technologies and assessment of their suitability for the large-scale cultivation in specific Agro-climatic regions.
Objectives of the Mission

• Promotion of cultivation and processing of aromatic crops.
• Skill development activities
• Intellectual property generation, valuation, and management
• Entrepreneurship development/Spin-offs
• Business development

Nodal laboratories for the Mission

• CSIR-Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (CSIR-CIMAP), Lucknow
• CSIR-Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology (CSIR-IHBT), Palampur
• CSIR-Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine (CSIR-IIIM), Jammu
• CSIR-National Botanical Research Institute (CSIR-NBRI), Lucknow.
• CSIR-North-East Institute of Science and Technology (CSIR-NEIST), Jorhat.

Significance

• It enables Indian farmers and aroma industry to become global leaders in the production and export of other essential oils on the pattern of menthol mint.
• Provide substantial benefits to the farmers in achieving higher profits, utilization of waste lands and protection of their crops from wild and grazing animals.
• It will improve availability of quality material on sustainable basis for growth herbal industry based on essential oils.

Possible Outcomes

• To bring 5500 hectares of additional area under captive cultivation aromatic cash crops particularly targeting rain-fed /degraded land across the country.
• Provide technical and infrastructural support for distillation and values-addition to farmers all over the country.
• Enabling effective buy-back mechanisms to assure remunerative prices to the farmers.
• Value-addition to essential oils and aroma ingredients for their integration in global trade and economy.