Kochi, Kasaragod, Thiruvananthapuram and Calicut: the five central farm research institutes inside Kerala

Background

Kerala is pulling its ports and its fishing economy into one maritime plan and has sent out the approach paper for its next five-year plan for district consultation, and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research already runs five institutes inside the State. Two of them sit at Kochi. ICAR - Central Institute of Fisheries Technology, Kochi, abbreviated CIFT, and ICAR - Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Kochi, abbreviated CMFRI, are both placed under the Council's Fisheries Science division. ICAR - Central Plantation Crops Research Institute, Kasaragod, abbreviated CPCRI, works under Crop Science. So does ICAR - Central Tuber Crops Research Institute, Thiruvananthapuram, abbreviated CTCRI. The fifth is ICAR - Indian Institute of Spices Research, Calicut, abbreviated IISR, again under Crop Science. The Council itself sits under the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, and its own list gives every institute both an abbreviation and a subject division. Those abbreviations and seats are what examiners ask for, so they are worth learning as a set.