A 58-year-old farmer, who grows rice to earn his livelihood, has recently developed Gopika, a high-yielding rice variety, naming it after his daughter. It has been registered in the Plant Varieties Registry as an enduring variety and the certificate acknowledged him as its true breeder. The farmer resides in a village at Pulamanthole in Malappuram and also does experimenting and developing plant varieties.
Interestingly, Gopika rice variety is the combination of Jyothi and Aishwarya varieties. He has stated that it’s matta rice-darker, tastier, and resilient in the wind and has good immunity. It has maturity period of 120 days. Moverover, allowing farmers to grow three crops in a year. A single stalk can grow up to 15 cm with about 210 grains, while normal rice stalks have only around 140 grains.
He learned about plant breeding through a farmer training sessions conducted by institutes such as the Regional Agricultural Research Station, Pattambi (RARS). He stated that he combined the ideas from that class with the traditional knowledge.
In 2002, he began his experimentations with rice variety. He cultivated and refined seven batches of the Gopika variety to ensure consistency within the eight years and in 2019, he submitted it for registration in 2019. However, the approval arrived in 2025. Furthermore, he has added there are buyers across Kerala for his grains today, and the cultivation is carried out in all districts except Kasaragod. In addition to Gopika, he has performed experiments in turmeric and yams, got unsuccessful. However, he is optimistic for the future.
Even her daughter is passionate for agriculture who wanted to become an Agricultural Officer but later she opted for Civil Engineering. Currently, she is the student of diploma course in Agriculture in Kayamkulam.
Following a routine from several years, he maintained a patch of land where he experiments with new plant varieties, adding that he has seen hardships related to hunger and poverty in life that has led to do him whatever for the food .
Our country has a specific law for the protection of plant varieties the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act, 2001 that safeguards rights of farmers. The main objectives of this act is to protect plant varieties including the rights of farmers and plant breeders. A plant variety is eligible for registration if it essentially fulfils the criteria of distinctiveness, uniformity and stability. If a plant variety fundamentally fulfills the requirements of stability, homogeneity, and distinctiveness, it can be registered.
Notably, R S Praveen Raj, Senior Principal Scientist at NIIST, Thiruvananthapuram has considered this registration a great achievement amid the few plant variety registrations in the country.