Despite the challenges of global warming and climate change, cultivation of aromatic crops offers hope for enhancing income of farmers. Globally, essential oils constitute multi-billion dollar business related to aroma business. Due to scarce availability of natural essential oils and its aroma ingredients, this business primarily relies on synthetic or semi-synthetic molecules. With the rising popularity of naturals, the demand and premium on aroma and aroma chemicals from natural sources is likely to rise proportionately. The crops selected under Aroma Mission are the source of natural aroma ingredients acceptable to the industry. They have enormous potential to give a quantum leap to the aroma business.

The focus of Aroma Mission is on employment and income generation for the rural masses through cultivation, processing and marketing of Aromatic industrial crops. Close interaction, cooperation and coordination among Farmers-Scientists-Industrial houses is the key for the success of this mission.

 CSIR Aroma mission aims to 

• Bring about 5500 ha of additional area under cultivation of aromatic crops, particularly targeting rain-fed /degraded lands across the country.
• Ensure availability of around 700 tons of indigenously produced essential oils worth Rs. 150 crores per annum.
• Provide technical and infrastructural support to the farmers/growers all over the country for distillation and values-addition.
• Enable effective buy-back mechanisms to assure remunerative prices to the farmers/growers.
• Facilitate value-addition to essential oils and aroma ingredients for their integration in global trade and economy.
• Making India a hub of opportunities in the domain of aroma products by developing and disseminating aroma related S & T to reach end-users/clients of CSIR (farmers, industry and society) leading to creation of business opportunities, rural development and life-quality improvement. All this will be attained without causing harm to the environment 
• Achieve self-sufficiency in the production of a majority of essential oils needed by domestic aroma industry and to reduce foreign exchange drain due to imports.
• Transforming India from a raw material producing country to an exporter of finished, value-added products of consistent quality and efficacy.