Samadiyaala is a small, shy village six hours away from Ahmedabad, which Laljibhai Murani calls home.

Born into a farmer's family, Laljibhai Murani and his brothers have grown up on these fields of gold. He looks after his lush crops of wheat, spring onions and other vegetables like they are family.

But in this kharif season, he misses the one crop that was his claim to fame amongst farmers across the region - til or sesame, ever since he propagated an all new variety of this crop which is so integral to the Indian diet.

Chance findings

Call it serendipity or "accidental discovery" but that's how Laljibhai and his brother Mansukhbhai stepped on their innovation, a new variety of Sesame, which they have named "ADARSH 8".

The brothers who have around seven acres of land between them, sprayed expired pesticides on their til crops in the early 90s, but only one third of the crop survived.

"Usually a sesame plant has four seeds. The ones we have develeoped can give up to eight seeds. This has resulted in the output being increased by 3 to 5 times than normal. We worked on this for close to five years now," said Laljibhai Murani, Innovator.

"Normally, the pods break unevenly to give out sesame seeds. We had to work on it to make sure that the pods opened evenly. Once we figured that out, we got very good results," he added.

It indicates that the old pesticides used might have caused some genetic mutation on til seeds.

Promotion of seeds

The stem of the new plant is thicker and grows taller as well, and according to the innovators, the new crop is more resistant to diseases like powdery mildew and blight.

However, there is a constraint with this innovation. If any other farmer wants to cultivate this crop, he needs to take the original seeds from Laljibhai and Mansukhbhai's first crop, which might not always be possible.

However, the reach of the innovation has gone beyond the fields of these two innovators.

The National Innovation Foundation awarded Laljibhai Murani, whose name the innovation was filed under, a consolation prize of Rs 1000.

"The sesame crop variety used traditionally used to give half a quintal of seeds per acre of land. That was improved and brought up to 4-5 quintals. That is still less than the output our seeds give which is 6-7 quintals per acre," said Mansukhbhai Murani, Co-innovator.

Laljibhai isn't the richest of all farmers with just four acres to his name. However, unlike others who try and plant seeds in every possible inch of land available, Laljibhai has devoted a space of one acre just for his experiments.

In the evenings, he sits around with friends and tries to convince them to do the same.

The brothers claim that til seed production has more than doubled in their farms and neighbouring districts too, but it seems like it's thanks to their observational skills rather than their innovative skills.