The Spices Board has launched a Quality Improvement Training Programme for farmers to help them avoid harmful chemicals in cultivation of crops like cardamom with a view to preventing export rejection. Spices Board sources said that there had been some instances of rejection in the past but the Board authorities were following up the issues involved regularly to help farmers overcome the problem.
The Quality Improvement Training Programmes will be held regularly to help farmers and to create awareness among them about the use of chemicals in cultivation of spices.
The Kerala Agricultural University (KAU) has, in the meanwhile, initiated a three-year programme to try organic cultivation of cardamom. The programme has completed a year of its operations and the results will be studied in detail, KAU sources said.
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A senior scientist at the university said that the domestic price of cardamom continued to fluctuate and the way to get better prices was to increase exports substantially. He also pointed out that the organic cultivation experiment in cardamom had yielded good results so far.
Collaborative project
Recently, the Spices Board, Rubber Board and the Digital University of Kerala had entered into an understanding to generate spatial models of soil nutrients in cardamom tracts and to develop an Android-based mobile application for cardamom growers to follow site-specific, need-based fertiliser recommendations. The Indian Cardamom Research Institute, Myladumpara, research wing of the Spices Board, initiated the collaborative project with the Rubber Research Institute of India, Rubber Board and the Geospatial Analytics Division of the Digital University.
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According to the Spices Board advanced estimate for 2020-21, there are around 69,000 hectares under the crop in the country with a production of 22,500 tonnes. Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu account for the production of small cardamom in the country. Among them, Kerala accounts for bulk of the production. The State has around 50,000 hectares under the crop and the annual average production is around 20,000 tonnes. Small holdings account for most of the cardamom production in the State.