A young horticulture officer has created a garden of exotic fruits and medicinal plants in a model nursery and farmers training centre in Khanapur in Belagavi district.
The government horticulture farm at Shedegali village now has saplings of over 30 fruit trees that are native to Africa, Europe, Australia and East Asia apart from various States in India.
Once they grow tall enough, their scions will be prepared and used for grafting. The grafted saplings will be distributed among interested farmers to ensure wider propagation.
They include macadamia integrifolia, lichi, water apples, ram phal and hanuman phal, rare citrous fruits, rambutan, Himachal apples, Atocarpus altilis, Synsepaium dulciticum, Pouteria campechiana, Syzygium Jambos, Agueum, Dimocarpus longan.
The farm, established in 1965, has older plantations of various types of sapota, jackfruit, mangoes, cashew and coconut. The farm is situated at a distance of about 30 km from Belagavi.
Farmers are being taken on tours around the farm to show and tell various stages of their cultivation and grooming. “Experts will interact with them to introduce such exotic crops. We will encourage them to diversify crops and adapt their horticultural farms to multicultural crops,” said Senior Assistant Director of Horticulture Rajkumar Takale, who headed the team that modernised the Shedegali farm.
The efforts to building the farm and training farmers have earned it well deserved fame. A team of officials from the South Korean Agriculture Ministry visited the farm and interacted with officials here last week.
“One of the prime reasons that farmers suffer from insecurity and unstable prices is that they tend to plant only one or a few varieties of crops. We want farmers to realise this and shun monoculture. Having a variety of fruit and medicinal plants will ensure that farmers will get a steady income. The occasional price volatility of some crops will be balanced when some farm produce sells high and others low,” Mr. Takale said.
A large area in Khanapur taluk and some parts of Belagavi taluk are part of the Western Ghats ranges. Farmers in Khanapur tend to grow traditional crops such as paddy and sugarcane and also horticultural crops such as sweet potato, ginger and cashew.
“However, their financial condition will improve if they adopt newer fruit and medicinal crops that have higher demand and better prices. Such fruit crops also have a longer lifespan compared to seasonal or annual field crops,” he said.
The transformation of the farm began post the COVID-19-induced lockdown. Due to long years of neglect, the farm had overgrown bushes and shrubs. A massive cleaning operation was taken up in the first phase. The farm was divided into 35 cultivating plots on four levels, based on watershed development principles.
All along the slope, there are contour bunds, trenches and swales. These structures have been designed in such a way that rainwater is harvested in an optimal manner. Green manure crops such as sun hemp and dhaincha were then sown all across the farm.
Then, seedlings of 32 types of fruits and medicinal plants were procured from various government nurseries, research centres and farm institutions from various States. Between 50-130 saplings of various types were cultivated on these plots. A nursery of coconut varieties such as the tall and dwarf cross, farm university hybrids and early and high yielding mango varieties was also created.
Senior Assistant Director of Horticulture Shamant K.N. said that the farm also has demonstration plots to help farmers learn techniques of preparing vermi-composting and bee-keeping.
“The Shedegali farm has some old mango trees that have been repurposed to demonstrate the top working grafting technique. This will help farmers learn growing different varieties of mangoes such as Alphonso, Dashehari, Benishan, Mallika in a single tree,” he said.
As per data available on the National Horticulture Board website, the Shedegali farm can produce 13,800 saplings of traditional fruit crops per year. “However, by the next cultivation season, we hope to begin distributing grafted saplings of exotic fruits and medicinal plants,” Mr. Takale said.
