PANAJI
Goa's agriculture department got a new director -- Sandeep Phaldesai -- as the incumbent, Neville Alphonso, bowed out of office on Friday following his superannuation.
The soft-spoken Alphonso was given a warm send-off on Friday evening at the department's headquarters at Tonca-Miramar by the staff, many of who came from zonal and other offices across the State.
In his parting words, Alphonso expressed confidence that Phaldesai will shoulder the responsibility efficiently and take the department's mission forward in the path set to enhance the role of agriculture in the State's progress and lives of Goans.
Incidentally, the two officers -- Alphonso and Phaldesai -- have switched positions and passed on batons in the department on at least four occasions through their over three-decade careers.
Alphonso, meanwhile, had led the department with his stewardship through the difficult COVID-19 pandemic period when it rose to the challenge of greater demand for its services as several Goan youths displaced from their jobs overseas began getting into agriculture and tilling their family lands.
Meanwhile, the department ensuring a greater focus on horticulture and floriculture had been the marked theme of Alphonso's tenure at the helm, the highlight of which was the commencement of exports of mango to the West.
Alphonso said Goa's emphasis in these two areas of agriculture -- horticultural products and floriculture -- will be crucial to the expansion of its impact on the State's economy and the livelihoods of people engaged in the sector.
Apart from mango, the significant success of floriculture was also highlighted by Alphonso who said the tourist State's dependence on flowers imported from other States has significantly reduced.
He may have parted ways after spending over three decades there, but a legacy and a path forward has been left behind by which the leadership and the department will have little scope to ignore the other Alphonso -- the king of fruits.
