vadodara delhiites may soon enjoy clear wintry mornings without choking on smoggy air caused by rampant burning of stubble in farms across punjab and haryana a gujaratbased biotech firm has come up with multimicrobial consortia that will not only put a lid on the environmental mess but also improve the soil quality as a bonus headed by padma shri dr m h mehta gujarat life sciences ltd glsl also recently bagged a national award for leadership role in postharvest stubble burning solution for its innovation we had been working on solving the stubble burning problem in the northern states for many years glsl did research and development to come up with a solution relife that can put an end to this air polluting menace that is also causing political problems between delhi punjab and haryana governments we managed to make microbial consortia about three years ago and then approached the punjab government mehta a scientist and glsl chairman told toithe punjab government roped in the punjab pollution control board and a few ngos and farmers bodies to convince the tillers to use microbial consortia relife is being used on about 400 acres of land and the results have been very encouraging within a couple of years we expect that about few lakh acres of land in punjab will be covered by microbial consortia mehta former vicechancellor of gujarat agricultural university said he added that farmers in haryana too are using relife all that the farmers have to do is mix relife with water and spray on the stubble the microbial consortia converts the stubble into biocompost that dissolves in the soil during ploughingin india rice wheat sugarcane and cotton are prone to maximum crop residue stubble burning is often blamed not only for air pollution but also deteriorating soil fertility it is also a major source of greenhouse gases if the state governments adopt microbial consortia this problem can be dealt with effectively mehta added glsl a biotechnology firm based in vadodara was established in 2000 with an aim to develop agro products that ecofriendly cost effective and organic