Rosha Grass Cultivation in Dehradun Forests

Abstract

The article briefly surveys the position of the Palmarosa Oil Industry in the country and the work done on scientific lines regarding the cultivation of rosha grass and the distillation of palmarosa oil. The author was closely associated with the work, as it progressed in the hands of his father S. Puran Singh, who did pioneering work as the first Biochemist at the Forest Research Institute, Dehradun, in initiating research on essential oils and later developed the rosha grass farm at Jaranwala and demonstrated the great potentials of the industry which has grown in importance because of its value as a foreign exchange earner. With his twenty years experience in the line commencing with his father's farm the author had to shift in 1947 to India to start afresh, this time it was the building of a farm out of forest blank areas. The rosha grass farms can be perpetual assets of the nation like the rose gardens of Bulgaria.