Balasahib Patil (39) has developed a high yield dual poded gram variety, which is more stable under both irrigated and rain fed conditions and has better fodder yield than the locally popular varieties.His family consists of his father, mother, wife and a baby daughter. His father was also an agriculturist and owned 14 acres of land. Sugarcane was grown in seven acres and on the remaining seven acres, they cultivated wheat and gram.Hasur, his native village is a medium sized one with a population of about 2800 people primarily engaged in agriculture. Various crops grown here are sugarcane, tomato, wheat, banana and gram. The village has underground sewage system since 1960 and has even won a state award for cleanliness. In 1966, his village got an irrigation system, which pumped water from nearby river and delivered water to the farms using cooperative pipelines.Balasahib is jolly natured and was naughty as a child, not much interested in studies. Swimming was his passion and his favorite past time was hanging out in groups with friends. Since childhood, the only thing he was interested in was agriculture. He started going to the fields only at the age of 15 years. He discontinued his studies after class ninth to pursue his dream of being a good agriculturist. Around the same time, his brother started a rice-puffing mill, which meant he had to allot most part of his time in agriculture rather than studies.

In 1991-92, he went to Dharwad University along with his brother and got a chance to observe the breeding program of gram there. Observing the scientists there making crosses to develop new variety, he became curious about the procedure and upon his return started the making various crosses using 110 flowers (male and female each).Pods were obtained in only 12 cross combinations and out of these one combination yielded dual pods/axil. This was in the year 1993. He selected that plant and continued to multiply and observe the same for few years. He gave it to farmers for trial (30 - 40 acres). In 1997, when the characters got stablised, he named the variety ‘Sushil Laxmi’ after his mother’s (Sushila) and the Goddess of his villages’ name (Laxmi). The same year he started a company named "Sushil Laxmi Hybrid Seeds Pvt. Ltd."While he was busy selecting and multiplying plants for developing his double pod variety, he had to continuously face ridicule from his villagers. In 1995, he took a sample plant in a saline water bottle and brought to ICAR, Delhi. On the way, he went to seek blessings from his religious guru, Acharya Nityanand ji. His guru called a press conference and invited journalist of Navbharat Times who later published a good news item on his innovation. He was later given an appreciation award by the then Transport Minister, Government of India.Later in 1996 he went to Delhi and showed his variety to the then Minister of Agriculture who waived the fee (Rs. 15,000) for variety testing from AICRP (All India Coordinated Research Project). Based on the encouraging results, he started selling his variety commercially in 1997-98.

branched and very long ranging from 1.5 to 2.0 meters with short internodes. Each panicle bears 25-35 racemes each bearing 15-30 capsules. Capsules are extra bold in size with deep green color.The yield per plant is 3.0 to 4.0 kg of dry cardamom compared to 2.5-3.0 kg in Njallani- the most popular variety of the region. One kilogram carries around 3800-5000 capsules. Other most important feature possessed by this farmer-bred variety, which has caught the attention of the scientific community, is a) the variety happens to highly adaptable to planting at lower altitudes and lower rainfall regions, which are traditionally known as non-cardamom belts and b) it can be taken as the inter-crop with the rubber plantations.Such is the demand of his variety that he has distributed around 50,000 plants since 2001 to thousands of farmers in various places like Wyanad, Idukki, Kottayam, Kodaikanal (Tamilnadu) and Madakkara (Karnataka). Many leading planters of the state have already switched to this variety and a large number of them come back to him for more seedlings. He feels that this is the greatest recognition for him and the best certificate of the superiority of his variety.When we asked about the society’s role in promoting his innovation, he diplomatically states, "In our society seventy-five percent of the people will support and the remaining twenty-five percent will at any cost always give negative opinion". However, he is thankful that in his case there has been good support all through from all quarters. He says three factors that are critical for wide diffusion and recognition of an innovation are, ‘recognition of the government body or an agency, quality of the product, and publicity by the media’.He is a cardamom award winner of the Spices Board during 2001-02 and was also recognized and felicitated by the Honey Bee Network during the Shodhyatra in December 2005, which has given a great boost to his confidence. His interest to develop more varieties has grown many fold since then.He was invited to NIF’s informal Research Advisory Committee meeting in May 2006 to interact with fellow innovators and also given a chance to participate in the traditional food festival, Saatvik, organized by SRISTI-NIF in November 2006.His ambition in life is to evolve superior varieties of various crops and convert his farmland into a model plantation as well.