Sachin KamlakarKarekar (43) is a progressive and skilled farmer cultivating turmeric, coconut, mango and areca nut. He has a keen interest in the development of high-yielding, disease-resistant varieties of turmeric.

He has developed an improved variety of turmeric through the clonal selection method based on desired traits. In 1998, he planted the local variety Kadja and observed a few plants were early maturing and had good vigour. He harvested the produce from these plants and further selected plants with the bestdisease free,big sized rhizomes, bright in colour,having higher yield and continued the best selection till 2007. By 2008, he was able to develop a superior clone with all the desired traits like early maturity, vigorous growth, disease-free plants with high yield and bright colour rhizomes. He multiplied the selection and named the variety SK-4. 

The variety is characterized by high yield potential (50t/ha fresh rhizome) with attractive bright reddish yellow coloured, big-sized rhizomes. It is a short duration (160-170 days) variety suitable for high rainfall regions with good tolerance to rhizome rot disease. 

During Kharif 2020, the validation trial was carried out at Dr.BalasahebSawant Konkan KrishiVidyapeeth, Dapoli. The variety was found to be promising, with high rhizome yield (56t/ha). Among the 32 tested varieties, SK-4 was observed to be superior over 28 check varieties and at par with the best check variety Sona (64t/ha), in terms of yield/ha. It was reported to be tolerant to leaf spot disease and rhizome rot disease. He has given this variety to a few fellow farmers in his surrounding villages, and the feedback is good. In 2021 around one lakh saplings of SK-4 were sold in Maharashtra. NIF-India has submitted the application for registration under PPV&FR Act, 2001.