Leimapokpam Helendro Singh (52) is a progressive farmer and is involved in vegetable farming. He has been growing vegetables like chilli, cabbage, cauliflower, cucumber, pea and rice crops in his field.

During 1990-91, his parents used to grow indigenous varieties of chilli -Meitei Morok and Tha Animakhaic Chabi in their fields.Meitei Morok was very popular for its taste and big fruit size but waslow yielding and longer duration variety while Tha Animakhai Chabiwas preferred by farmers for its short duration and high yield but smaller fruits. He was cultivating Tha Animakhai Chabi and Achar morokvarieties in his field in 1995 and during harvesting he saw some plants of Tha Animakhai Chabi bearing big sized fruits. He selected those fruits and collected seeds for sowing. He continued the method of selection for 10 years and in 2005, the variety was stabilizedforits desirable traits of big sized and number of fruits. The varietal characters became very popular in the region and many scientists and farmers started visiting his farm. The variety became very popular among the farmers at Kamong area and since 2005, the variety is being cultivated by the farmers of Bishnupur, Imphal East and Imphal West districts of Manipur.

The variety is a medium duration variety, suitable for timely sowing (October to November) under Manipur conditions. The fruits of the variety are bigger in size, have attractive red colour with mild pungency and good taste. It is also tolerant to leaf curl disease. Facilitated by NIF – India, the field testing of the variety was carried out at Central Agricultural University, Imphal, Manipur. It was found to be outperformer in terms of fruit size and yield, which was significantly higher than the check varieties. This variety has been diffused among farmers of Bishnupur, Imphal East and Imphal West districts of Manipurwho have reported broader chillifruits having higher yield, which fetches them better market prices.