Guwahati, May 30: Powerful cameras aboard Indian remote sensing satellites are zooming in on the Northeast to find out the wealth hidden in its bamboo grooves. It is for the first time that remote sensing satellites are being used to assess and quantify the bamboo resources of the seven states of the region. The idea is to help these states utilise the stock before the debilitating phenomenon of bamboo flowering occurs.
Bamboo flowering usually occurs once in every five decades. Two-thirds of the country’s growing stock of bamboo is in the Northeast. The raw stock is estimated to be worth Rs 5,000 crore and proper utilisation of even about 25 per cent of this can generate upto Rs 2,500 crore annually.
V.S. Oberoi, adviser to the National Mission on Bamboo Applications, said here today that satellite findings pertaining to Dhemaji district of Assam had already been received.
Oberoi, who was in the city for a meeting of the advisory committee of the national mission, said efforts were continuing to develop technologies to use bamboo in newer ways.
A 60,000 metric tonne-capacity plant is being set up at the Export Promotion Industrial Park at in Amingaon, on the outskirts of Guwahati, to manufacture high-quality bamboo flooring boards. The national mission has contributed Rs 2.4 crore of the estimated project cost of Rs 5 crore.
A bamboo shuttering board manufacturing plant in Amingaon and a 200-tonne bamboo shoot-processing unit in Jorhat are in the pipeline. The first unit will be set up by Rhino Bamboo Industry.
About 3 lakh tissue-cultured bamboo saplings will be made available to the region soon as part of the national mission. “Tissue-cultured plants will be offered at Rs 2.50 per plant to the states of the Northeast. But they will have to follow a specific set of practices for best results,” Oberoi said.
The Planning Commission has been requested to make provisions for the utilisation of 15 commercially viable species of bamboo.