Plant Scientists dress Buddha tree wounds

GAYA: Plant Scientists from the Dehradun based Forest a Research Institute on Friday dressed the wounds of the Bodhi tree, the direct descendant of the original Peepal tree that 2500 years back, provided shade to Buddha, then a wandering Prince during the final stages of the long meditation that ultimately climaxed in enlightenment and promoted the prince to a divine status.
The sacred tree suffered cut injuries during routine pruning a few weeks back and the scientists applied chemical paste on cut points to conduct dressing of the tree's wounds.Dr PP Bhojvaid, Director Forest Research Institute Dehradun and Dr NSK Harsh, Plant Scientist from the same institute supervised the dressing operation. With the application of the chemical paste, the vulnerability of the cut points to fungal infection and other ailments stands greatly reduced.
According to Dr Harsh, the tree was in fine health and falling of the leaves was a cyclic process and there was no cause of alarm over the somewhat barren look of the tree. Fresh leaves will come out to restore the sacred tree's grandeur, said the scientist.
The FRI was entrusted with the preservation and health maintenance of the sacred tree following an alarming deterioration in its health a few years back. The shrine management committee and the FRI have signed an MOU for the preservation and health up keep of the tree. As part of the MOU conditions, FRI scientists conduct thorough health check up of the tree twice a year.
After taking over the job of preserving the sacred tree and keeping it in good health, FRI scientists identified the irritants in the maintenance of the sacred tree's health. The irritants included heavy foot fall in the tree root vicinity causing soil compaction and resultant blockade in the flow of sub surface nutrients vital for the tree's health.
In order to overcome this problem the scientists recommended restriction on the number of visitors to the shrine at any given point of time but the recommendation could not be implemented for practical reasons as it was not found wise to prevent devotees from entering the shrine. Marble slabs inserted in the area were also found to be harmful for the tree's long term health.
The scientists also noticed that on account of sodium vapour lamps and other high intensity lighting arrangements, the tree was not in a position to properly perform the photo synthesis process so vital for its health. The scientists recommended replacement of sodium vapour lamps with LED lamps and complete darkness between 10 in the evening and early morning to facilitate the photo synthesis process.
Incidence of light directly falling on the tree in the night has drastically come down, said Dr Harsh.