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Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu join hands for Horticulture Excellence Centres
MP May Establish Horticulture Excellence Centres with Israel
Bhopal, July 22 , 2021 । Prime Minister of india Narendra Modi and Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have joined hands for doubling the income of farmers by prompting horticulture through technology in Gujarat. Madhya Pradesh is also considering to develop Center of Excellence for horticulture crops drawing inspiration from Gujarat where Department of horticulture, Gujarat state under Indo – Israel Agriculture Project, has established the Center of Excellence for Datepalm according to official information available with MPPOST.COM
The center is located 12 km from Bhuj city of Kutch district. This center was digitally inaugurated jointly by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel in recent past.
The main objective of this center is to train farmers as per Israel protocol of Datepalm cultivation. The center is established on 4 ha of land out of which 2.25 ha land is utilized for demonstration of Datepalm crop. This demonstration plot have 3.5 years old 262 tissue cultured datepalm plants at the distance of 9 * 9 m. out of that 17 plants are of ADP – 1 (red fruit) variety released by Anand Agriculture University, Gujarat and 245 plants are of Barhee (yellow fruit) variety. All the plants are provided with drip irrigation and plastic mulching which results in better utilization of water and nutrients by checking weed growth and water evaporation. This might be India’s only demonstration farm of datepalm having 100 % drip irrigation and plastic mulching technology.
The center has facilities like Well-equipped training hall, Pack House with cold storage, Pollen storage facility @ – 21oC, Pollen testing lab, Net-house for hardening of plants raised from suckers. More than 3000 farmers have been trained here across Gujarat. The training consist aspect like nursery management, irrigation, fertigation, pollination, bunch care, harvesting and post-harvest handling. The center also have weather station from where daily evaporation of water is being measured and accordingly daily irrigation advisory is being circulated among datepalm farmer through WhatsApp group of datepalm farmer managed by this center. This WhatsApp group is the main tool for two-way interaction between center and farmers during current pandemic situation. The first crop of 5.5 MT fruits has been harvested during this month.
The tissue cultured plants of datepalm costs around Rs. 3750 / plant. The 1 ha of plantation requires 125 plants which results in more than Rs. 5 lakh of initial investment. Therefore, to encourage farmers for datepalm cultivation department of horticulture, Gujarat state provides financial assistance of Rs. 1250/plant up to 1 ha plantation per beneficiary through I – Khedut portal of Gujarat state.
