The grafts of trees producing the superior ‘Himayat’ variety of mangoes will be on sale at the Centre of Excellence (CoE) of the Horticulture Department at Mulugu, 20 km from here, from June 1.
As a premier variety commanding higher price, Himayat has so far been a restricted product but now, the Horticulture Department has made plans to take it to the public in a big way to enhance its commercial value.
It had planted about 600 Himayat saplings at the CoE, two years ago, and started observing one or two fruits from each plant this season for quality. The quality was found to be high and fit for export market, said Horticulture Commissioner L. Venkatram Reddy.
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He expected an annual average income of ₹2.40 lakh per acre from the sixth year of plantation of the Himayat trees. The yield by then could go up to five to six tonnes per acre as against one-and-a-half tonnes in traditional trees.
The CoE has developed a hassle-free technology to grow Himayat trees at its 50-acre campus to make it a high density crop with a raised bed and training and pruning of branches. The canopy of plants was made uniform in four directions. The trees were raised to a maximum height of six to seven feet for easy harvesting of fruits.
In traditional plantation of mango trees, the height was unmanageable and often resulted in fruits dropping, resulting in 40 to 50% spoilage. The cultivable area was also wide accommodating just 50 trees per acre. Whereas, the Himayat variety with the help of high density technology ensured 500 trees per acre.
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The fruits could be hand-picked because of low height. Crop damage due to high velocity of winds could be avoided by taking up plantation of sandalwood and tissue culture bamboo along borders to stand as a wall.