The city-based Natural Organic Farmers’ Association (NOFA) is likely to adopt the best horticulture practices followed in Israel if the efforts made by its treasurer Ch. R.K. Prasad bear fruit. He is in talks with some companies in the west Asian country for importing grafting technology and replicating the same in demonstration farms here in the next few months.
Priority is given to growing vegetables through technologies proposed to be sourced from Israel which is a pioneer in horticulture. Mr. Prasad who was on a weeklong visit to that country, told The Hindu that the idea was to help farmers in Krishna district in achieving higher yields of vegetables and other crops by adopting Israeli technologies in identified sectors, particularly the grafting technology that created wonders there.
The idea is to grow a few varieties of vegetables in the same way as Israelis do in a mechanised way, in fields around Vijayawada city and cover more horticulture crops depending on the yields. Grafted bananas and papayas were found to be giving excellent yields in Israel and the technical know-how of it is sought to be passed on to local farmers.
“The Israeli companies mastered the cultivation of bananas in shade-nets with minimal quantities of water and some other horticulture crops under extreme heat conditions through the grafting method. The tissue culture and seed multiplication systems that they adopted were phenomenal,” he said.
Under the climates prevalent in most parts of the district, grafting will yield good results as the superior characteristics of two plants would be brought together. Better pest resistance and sturdiness would be the biggest advantages.
Besides, the indiscriminate use of fertilizers could be checked to a large extent as the grafted plants would be well adapted to the local conditions.
