Agro Food Chamber to promote Palmyra
The visitors on all five days from 11 am to 7 pm could explore the intricate design and stories etched on palm leaves and buy them to decorate homes and offices.
Representative image
MADURAI: The Agro Food Chamber, Madurai, has launched efforts to revive Palmyra, the traditional crop of Tamil Nadu.
Palm trees, which are state’s treasure, have been an integral part of Tamil’s life for centuries. Palmyra is the State Tree of Tamil Nadu and has ecological and economic value-hailed as a Karpaga Viruksha (divine tree, which offers everything one asks for) in Tamil culture as no part of it goes waste.
It has been enumerated that there are 801 ways in which the tree and its parts could be used. Palmyra are valued for their multi-purpose usage, such as sweet toddy (pathaneer), fruits, ice apple (nungu), palm jaggery (panam karuppatti), palm candy (panam kalkandu), palmyra tuber (panam kilangu), palmyra oil, palm leaves, several handicraft products, palm trunk wood (panam kattai) and in traditional medicine S Rethinavelu, president, Agro Food Chamber of Commerce and Industry (AFCCI), Madurai, said on Thursday.
Hence, the Chamber resolved to revive the “Treasure of Palmyra” in Tamil Nadu in association with organisations and activists.
Palm Leaf Art expo, workshop
As part of the initiative, the Chamber, in association with Miracle Tree Life Science, is scheduled to organise an ‘Exhibition of Palm Leaf Art Painting and Training Workshop on Palm Leaf Art and Engraving’ for five days from May 25 to May 29 at Agro Food Trade Centre, Sikkanthar Chavadi in Madurai. In Tamil Nadu, the palm leaf art pictures were found only behind glasses at museums. This art is still thriving in Odisha and their artisans would display marvelous palm leaf colour paintings and engravings at the exhibition, first of its kind in Madurai.
The visitors on all five days from 11 am to 7 pm could explore the intricate design and stories etched on palm leaves and buy them to decorate homes and offices.
During the training workshop, artisans, mostly from Odisha, would impart training as to the method of treating palm leaves, art of drawing with colours and engravings. The Chamber has also planned to organise ‘Palm Tree Farmers Meet,’ he said.