“We have adopted the rejuvenation through participatory mode in almond belts of Kashmir whose success encouraged the farmers for large scale adoption of the technology.” Dr KK Srivastava, a senior scientist at CITH said.
Pertinently, Jammu and Kashmir is the leading state in terms of area under almond crop. However the productivity of almond in Kashmir is very low due to old and senile almond orchards with poor orchard floor and canopy management practices.
According to Dr Srivastava, a preliminary survey of almond belts of Kashmir valley covering districts of Pulwama, Budgam, Srinagar and Islamabad (Anantnag), has revealed that more than 70 per cent of almond orchards have lived their economic age— 30-40 years. “Some of the orchards were 50 – 60 years old.”
He said that was reason they introduced rejuvenation technique for almond orchards.
While explaining the methodology adopted for almond rejuvenation, he said: “This technique involves pruning of first order branches in December-January followed by top grafting with Waris variety and Pranyaz as pollenizer.”
He added: “It further involves fertilizers and manures @ 50 kg FYM, 500g Nitrogen, 250g Phosphorus and 700 g Potassium and Cup-plate type water harvesting structure created and surface covered with black polythene mulch to prevent water loss.”
Almond, one of the most important temperate fruit nuts has a major role in Kashmir economy especially in districts of Budgam, Pulwama, Islamabad (Anantnag) and Srinagar.
At the international level, the US, Spain, Iran and Italy are the largest almond producers. Per hectare productivity in these countries is quite high as compared to what is recorded in Kashmir.
USA has 4.50t/ha productivity which is very high in comparison to India which accounts for 23.81 thousand hectare area with a production of 17.23 thousand tones while the productivity in India is 0.73 ton/ha as compared to world average 1.5 ton/ha.
Source: http://tinyurl.com/kxhtb2p
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