The first-ever World Bamboo Day was celebrated in India's Northeastern state of Nagaland on September 18 to highlight the importance of bamboo, also known as ‘green gold of forest’ for its use in over 1,500 applications, officials said.

In Kohima, a week-long International Bamboo Festival began on September 16 with a seminar on ‘Bamboo for livelihood and community development’.

Nagaland Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio inaugurated the seminar while Vice President Hamid Ansari was the chief guest of the World Bamboo Day function on Saturday (September 18).

"The main objective to observe the World Bamboo Day and to organise the bamboo festival is to promote the knowledge of traditional uses of bamboo in various parts of the world and to showcase the local methods of use of bamboo to the other parts of the globe," Rio said in his address at the seminar.

The reports say that over 500 representatives and experts of various countries including Japan, France, Korea, Thailand, Norway, the US, Italy and Greece, and participants from different states of India took part in the event.

Addressing at the World Bamboo Day function at Kohima Naga Heritage Village, the Vice President of India, M Hamid Ansari said that unlike steel and plastic, bamboo is eco friendly, being not only biodegradable but also having enormous capacity to sequester carbon.

The Vice President has said that in order to realise the full potential of bamboo, various technical, financial and entrepreneurial interventions are needed in the fields of forestry, land use, propagation technology for its cultivation and sustainable use, and in the areas of industry and finance.

WBO President Kamesh Salam said, "Commercial cultivation of the green gold - bamboo - and production of modern value-added products are gradually gaining momentum in India under the aegis of the (India's) National Bamboo Mission (NBM) which was set up few years back."