Horticulture better than field farming

A Correspondent

JORHAT: “Horticulture farming is better than field farming. The Government of India is helping for progress in horticulture to increase the country’s Gross Domestic Product. Research is being carried out under the ICAR-All India Coordinated Research Project (AICRP) on fruits in 46 centres in India.

Selected fruits like banana, citrus, grapes, guava, jackfruit, litchi, mango and papaya are available round the year with best yields. Farmers have taken up production on commercial basis for which horticulture business has increased from 316 million ton to 490 million ton between 2011 to 2018,” said Dr BM Reddy, former Vice-Chancellor of YSR University, Andhra Pradesh, who attended as the chief guest at the 6th Group Discussion of ICAR-All India Coordinated Research Projects on Fruits. The three-day programme held at the Dr MC Das Memorial Auditorium of Assam Agricultural University (AAU), Jorhat, concluded on Saturday.

Dr Reddy said climatic change might create a major problem for which horticultural scientists needed to work in the field for proper monitoring and investigation. Regarding the funding for this project, the Centre was monitoring the output of the project and hence scientists needed to give more time in the field.

Dr Prakash Patil, the Project Coordinator of Fruits ICAR-IIHR, Bengaluru, said research on selected fruits at 46 centres in India, besides the collaboration with ICAR-CCRI for citrus fruits, ICAR-NRC for banana, ICAR-NRC for grapes and ICAR-NRC for litchi, had increased the total count of centres to 50. All the scientists working on this project should come together once a year to review the progress of work done at different centres and formulate a need-based technical programme, he added.

In 1973, the first workshop of AICRP on tropical fruits, the then All India Coordinated Fruit Improvement Project (Cell-II), was held at Coimbatore. Subsequently 16 group discussions were held bi-annually at different AICRP centres and 20 group workers’ meeting for sub-tropical fruits were also held before the merger. Thereafter, five group discussions were held at Dapoli, Udaypur, Ludhiana, Bengaluru and Tiruchirappalli respectively.

At present, six group discussions were held at Assam Agricultural University to review the progress of work done during October 2017 to September 2018 on these mandate crops.

During the closing function of ICAR-AICRP on fruits, Devabrat Rabha, a promising banana farmer from Madang village, Goalpara, who managed to produce 50,000 to 80,000 bananas in his 400 bighas of land annually and earned Rs 1 crore by involving 35 youths, was felicitated.

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