Prospects of Protected Cultivation of Vegetable Crops in North Eastern Hilly Region

摘要

Cultivation of vegetables year round in North-Easternhilly terrain the soils particularly in Assam is not possible because ofextremes variation of rainfall, temperature and humidity. In addition,the biotic stresses also do not allow successful production ofvegetables like tomato, chili, capsicum, cucumber, okra, caulifloweretc. in the fields mainly during rainyandpost rainy season. In spite ofthe great importance of vegetable crops, it faces a lot of constraintslike photo stress, moisture stress, temperature stress, and weedsgrowth, deficiencies in soil nutrients, excessive wind velocities andatmospheric carbon-dioxide. These constraints can be alleviated byadopting a unique, specialized hi-technology known as protectedcultivation. Different protected cultivation structures having differenttemperature, humidity, UV radiation ranges and also having differentcost involvement in construction of structure which may results theproduction of vegetables with distinct advantage of quality,productivity and favorable market price to the growers. So, thepresent study was carried out to evaluate the prospects of protectedcultivation with construction of hi-tech green house and low costshade-net house for cultivation of vegetable year around in the hillyterrain of Assam. On experimental trials, the vegetables such asTomato (Feb- June), Spinach beat (June-July), Tomato (Aug.-Nov),Cucumber (Nov.-Feb) were grown and the cost of productionevaluated. The benefit cost ratio for hi-tech green house and low costshade-net house for cultivation of vegetable year around in the hillyterrain of Assam was found 1.48:1 and 2.29:1, respectively. Thus,protected cultivation could be the only one alternative to control theenvironment for maximizing crop productivity percent area andincreasing the quality of vegetables produce round the year.