If the plan clicks, the global crop protection major with an exposure of over Rs 700 crore invested during the last few years in India, may hold such demonstration in many more farms to popularise the already introduced 30 key brands from its shelf.

The Aventis Group, in association with AgrEvo (a Hoechst and Schering Group Co), with a 14-per cent market share in India, has in its portfolio products ranging from seeds to pesticides, fungicides to herbicides, and genes patents to biotechnology for wheat, rice, cotton, vegetables, tea and other plantations.

According to a company spokesman, it proposed to increase its turnover from Rs 350 crore in 1999 to Rs 400 crore during the current calendar year by introducing third generation products. The products developed elsewhere are usually introduced in local conditions after field trials with the approval of agricultural universities and other agencies.

The company, the spokesman said, is also bullish on IT, providing real time advice in integrated pest management, laying a roadmap to set up a chain of suppliers-distributors-farmers. Its 22 business centres in the country are already connected by satellite communications.

The Group, which spends $400 millions annually on basic research worldwide, has plans to source products sysnthesised at its various facilities in India. While the Ankleshwar unit, producing five basic chemicals and a dozen products, is the oldest, it has recently taken over 51 per cent stake at Bilap Industries at Vapi for a consideration of Rs 250 crore. Its wholly-owned ProAgro Seeds near Delhi produced a wide range of hybrid and other seeds.

The company which just launched `Ezee-Tab', an insecticide for pyrothroid, for the first time in water soluble tablet form, proposes to launch four new broad-spectrum products during the next couple of months.

While `Civet', another insecticide, is due for launch in July, `Raft', a herbicide particularly useful for cumin, is scheduled to be out in the market by September, both `Basta', a herbicide, and `Ovental', a fungicide useful for rice crops, around October.