The new variety of groundnut ‘Moralo’ developed by Thakershibhai is known for its sweetness, high yield and resistance to ‘Tikka’ disease.Thakershibhai is now in seventies and agriculture is his childhood interest. Because of his fascination for farming, he dropped out of school after class four and started going to his fields with his father to learn the intricacies of cultivation. He grew up to become a successful farmer gaining immense popularity and the respect of the people of the region.His village, few kilometers from Junagadh is a big agricultural village with a population around 3000. Thakarshibha’s family consists of his wife, his five sons and two daughters. Two sons are engaged in diamond cutting business, two others run a grocery shop in the village and one, Nitinbhai is actively involved in agriculture with him. So involved is Thakarshibhai in agriculture that his home is next to the fields so that he can keep a tab on every detail.Thakarshibhai owns around thirteen acres of irri

Knowing his passion for agriculture, it does not come as a surprise that he developed a new variety of groundnut named "Moralo". In Gujarati ‘mor’ means "peacock" and the shape the groundnut pod has resembles the bird. Though the villagers have changed the name to ‘Thakarshi’, it still goes by the popular name, Moralo, in the Saurashtra region.The droughts of 1987-88 were the worst for years for Thakarshibhai. The drought was followed by irregular rains with the result that there was a shortage of groundnut seeds in Saurashtra and the government had to distribute seeds. Thakarshibhai purchased Tagavi, Saankdi and Punjab-1 varieties of seeds from the Junagadh District Sangh. With the onset of rains in June, he sowed the Punjab-I variety.In 1988, while weeding, Thakarshibhai and his son, Nitin noticed two plants that stood out from the rest. They were greener, their leaves were thicker, the branches were longer, they bore more flowers and bore a larger number of pods/kernels. These plants were marked and stored as seeds by Thakarshibhai. In 1989, he sowed these seeds separately. He again collected the seeds from the new batch and sowed them again in 1990. He also found that this variety had a tendency to spread in width as it grew.He observed the plants carefully and found that flowering began 20-22 days after sowing and the crop matured in 90 days, a month before the regular variety. It was then he was convinced that what he had found was something new. In 1991, after the rains, he sowed these seeds in one acre where he kept 18" distance between rows and interHe claims that he developed many varieties of gram, primarily by selection process. His father wanted him to work on the sugarcane plantation, which was a cash crop while he wanted to research on the gram. He was given little over two acres of land for his gram crop. Since he did not have much land he lost all his developed varieties and could not preserve them. He took land on lease basis, cultivated gram on it, and bought it back by paying twenty percent more. The area under his gram cultivation is now more than 300 acres.

He selected plants having features, viz., dual pods/axil, bushy growth and dual seeds/pod obtained by crossing Annegari and Phule G 12 and then practiced rigorous recurrent selection for a period of eight years for stabilizing the characters.The prominent features of the variety that makes it market acceptable and highly popular among the farmers and the seed sellers are stability in performance in terms of yield (14-15 quintal/acre under irrigated and 9-10 quintal/acre under rain fed conditions), appearance of dual pods/axil to the extent of 60 per cent, bushy growth habit, higher harvest index (28 - 30 gram/100 grains) and better forage yield.The preference in the market for the harvest of ‘Sushil Laxmi' is quite good as the grain is bold, uniform and also the colour of the grain is uniform and attractive. The produce gets easily sold in the market and fetches good price ranging from Rs. 1500 - 2000/quintal.The potential and worth of the variety can also be gauged from the fact that with very little effort on marketing it, it has registered a sale of about 600 quintals (year 2005) of seeds and advanced orders worth 1900 quintals (year 2006) have been already received. The variety is reported to be highly popular among the farmers across the states of Maharashtra, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh.Apart from gram, he has been able to buy fifteen acres of land for his own cultivation on which he grows sugarcane. Seeing the success of his son now, his father is a happy man bur Balasaheblaments the fact that if his father had given him some land earlier he would have been able to save many of his gram varieties.Currently he is trying to experiment on bittergourd, lady’s finger and wheat. He claims to have developed a new variety of wheat by crossing Dharwad University variety DWR162 and a Rajasthan Variety Raj1555. The trials for the same are still going on.