With support from NRL,Assam, farmers of Bokakhat send potatoes seeds to the cold storage at Jinjia, Biswanath District :
Aiidesh News : 25 March – 2026 :
Today’s morning, farmers from the Chapori area of Bokakhat gathered near the Panbari cold storage. Last year’s seed potatoes were brought to be stored in cold storage. A total of 68 farmers from villages such as Jugol, Jugolati, Choguri, Sohola, and Chinakan produced 17.5 tons of seed potatoes, which they transported in five trucks to Panbari today. According to departmental sources with the cooperation of Numaligarh Refinery, the seed potatoes will be preserved in the cold storage at Jinjia in Biswanath district.

It is noteworthy that in 2022, Numaligarh Refinery established a solar-powered cold storage facility with a capacity of 20 tons at Panbari of Bokakhat. Over the past four years, this facility has greatly benefited local farmers. Bokakhat had long faced a shortage of modern cold storage facilities, and irregular electricity supply made it difficult to operate conventional ones. To address this, Numaligarh Refinery, in collaboration with the Assam Agriculture Department, set up four solar-powered cold storage units of 5 tons each at Panbari, with a total capacity of 20 tons.

Farmers usually face difficulties storing seed potatoes at home for long periods, as high humidity and pests damage the crop. Therefore, they have been storing seed potatoes in Panbari’s cold storage for up to eight months, until the next planting season begins. Since its installation of this cold storage in 2022, farmers have increasingly used the facility: In 2023, 28 farmers stored 12.7 tons of seed potatoes. In 2024, 73 farmers stored 17 tons. In 2025, 283 farmers stored 57 tons. Last year, due to excess seed potatoes, arrangements were made to send them to a private cold storage in Chinamara, Jorhat, with the efforts of Alakananda Kakoti (Deputy Director of Agriculture, Panbari Field Trial Centre) and Mintu Hedique (Chief General Manager, Numaligarh Refinery). Numaligarh Refinery provided a grant of ₹1,99,000 for this purpose.

This year, as Jorhat’s cold storage expressed its inability to accommodate the seed potatoes, the Agriculture Department and Numaligarh Refinery jointly decided to store them at Jinjia in Biswanath district. Today marked the beginning of storing Bokakhat farmers’ seed potatoes at Jinjia cold storage for the year 2026. The entire expenditure for this initiative has been borne by Numaligarh Refinery.