Insect museum will be opened soon: TNAU VC
On March 18 this year, the CM officially inaugurated the building during his visit to Coimbatore.
Coimbatore: Long years of wait for the unique 'Insect Museum' in Coimbatore would get over soon, as the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) is all set to throw it open to the public here shortly.
"In the next 15 days we are expecting it to be open for the public. The reason why it has taken so much time to open it, is because we have been adding a lot of things which we were not aware of in the beginning, like adding an auditorium, ticket counter, honeybee keeping and a natural ecosystem.
We also invested on non-heat generating bulbs, air conditioners, specific screen based television system to explain on each and every insect which wasn't in the plan initially," said TNAU vice-chancellor, Dr K. Ramasamy.
The state government had allotted Rs 2 crore initially, but later from the university saving fund Rs 1.5 crore has been invested for additional expenses, he added.
On March 18 this year, the CM officially inaugurated the building during his visit to Coimbatore. It was when Edappadi K Palanisami inaugurated 127 schemes and buildings in the city through video-conferencing from the Codissia grounds.
"We are doing the arrangements like making posters on different themes like insect biology, different species and group of insects and there is also a section for live butterflies. There are audio and visual screens, auditorium will also play short documentary films on insects and there will be live demonstration of beehives," said Dr. N. Chitra, assistant professor, Department of Entomology, TNAU.
It was the idea of Dr K. Gunathilakraj, retired professor and consultant insect biosystematics. "We have been working on this project since 2013 now and it is a huge area to fill up with a variety of collection and projects," she added.
Dr V. V. Ramamurthy, retired principal scientist at Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, is also part of this project.
The 6, 000-sq ft museum with a collection of 75, 000 insects from all over the country will feature more than 5,000 species of insects. The DC was the first to report this on July 20, 2015.