CSISA-IRRI Machinery Training in RARS, Jessore A two daylong training namely Hands on training on Machinery Use and Maintenance was organized by Cereal System Initiative in South Asia (CSISA) project of International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in collaboration with Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI) in Regional Agricultural Research Station (RARS), Jessore on 16th and 17th November 2011. In the inauguration session, on 16th Dr. Jagadish Timsina, Senior Scientist--II, Cropping System Agronomist and CSISA-IRRI Coordinator-Bangladesh was the chief guest and Dr. M.A. Saleque, Project Coordinator (Adaptive Research and Delivery) was the Special guest. The inauguration session was presided over by Dr. Firoz, Chief Scientific Officer, RARS, Jessore and facilitated by A.K.M Ferdous, Cropping system Specialist, CSISA-IRRI, Jessore hub. A total of 20 participants including Officer-Agricultural Development, Power tiller owner/farmer and Power tiller driver from 5 different hubs of CSISA-IRRI (Dinajpur, Mymensingh, Jessore, Khulna and Barisal) participated in the training. Md. Latiful Bari, Specialist-Agricultural Engineering on Farm Power and Machinery, CSISA, Dinajpur hub, was the facilitator of the training and the main focus of the training was introduction about machinery, i.e., Power tiller operated seeder (PTOS), Strip tiller and Bed planter , it's use and maintenance both in theoretically and practically. In the inauguration session giving more emphasis on Conservation Agriculture (CA) speakers said that Bangladesh is an over populated country, crop land is decreasing day by day, still production is less than demand, and so cropping intensity should be increased. For this -timely planting and harvesting is necessary; without machinery it is not possible. Now we are observing labor shortages, post harvest losses is still high, production cost is hiked, soil is eroding and so on. This is the high time for conservation agriculture (CA) through which we can produce crop maintaining minimum soil disturbance (zero tillage or reduced tillage), residue retention and profitable cropping pattern. In practical session in supervision of Md. Latiful Bari, Specialist-Agricultural Engineering on Farm Power and Machinery, CSISA, Dinajpur hub, all participated farmers, power tiller drivers and Officers-Agricultural Development (ADOs) learned assembling of PTOS and bed Planters, Machinery calibration for seed rate adjusting and practiced in the field with different seeds i.e., rice seeds group by group. Learning the use and observing the performance of PTOS and Bed planters, farmers are happy and opinioned that it would be useful and applicable in their field condition also. Really they are impressed to see the 3 in 1(plough, seed sowing and labeling) performance of PTOS. According to them, it will reduce labour cost, save time and energy, save seeds, timely and quickly line sowing will be possible with minimum tillage. It is costly for small farmers to purchase, but rich farmers can buy it, assemble it with their own power tiller and rent it out easily. In this regard, field level demonstration of PTOS as well as Bed planter is very much necessary.