INTERVENTIONS IN PLANTING MATERIAL PRODUCTION

摘要

India is the foremost country in production, consumption and export of spices. No country in the world grows as many kinds of spices as India. As per the terminology on spices prepared by the Bureau of Indian Standards, 63 spices are produced in the country. In all the 28 States and Five Union Territories of India, one or more spices are grown in abundance. Spices are cultivated in India in about 23 lakh hectares of land with an annual production of 25.72 lakh tonnes fetching Rs. 1650 crores of export revenue. India's share in global market is 47 per cent in volume and 26 per cent in value. Because of the rising population and shrinking land and other resources, it is impracticable to expand the area under spices cultivation to a greater extent. Thus, the only alternative is to increase the yield of spice crops several folds per unit area. In developing countries like India, there is an urgent need to increase the productivity of spice crops in order to meet the growing demands for home consumptionand export. For want of good planting materials, in many of the spice crops, breakthroughs in production have not been possible. This can be achieved by scaling up the production of quality planting materials. Efforts undertaken at various State Agricultural Universities and ICAR institutes have resulted in packages and protocols for the production of quality planting materials in many of the spice crops.