With an aim to motivate farmers to grow high-yielding pulse varieties such as red gram, green gram and black gram, the Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK), Virinjipuram, has been creating farmlands inside their campus and raising these pulses.
The Agriculture Department has planned to increase cultivable area in the district through innovation in cultivation practices.
D. Dinakaran, Professor and Head, Agriculture Research Station, Virinjipuram, Vellore, says that the pulses grown in the KVK farm have shown signs of increased productivity, giving confidence to farmers to cultivate them in their own farmlands.
Krishi Vigyan Kendra and Agriculture Research Station have been providing inputs to farmers, who have followed it with slight modifications.
According to farmers, under the conventional method, red gram has been raised as an intercrop in groundnut fields during Aadi season, corresponding to June-July period, every year.
But due to poor rainfall, farmers have suffered a severe drop in production over the last five years. Now, they are trying it after the first spell of rains in the Tamil month of ‘Purattasi’ (September 16-October 15), with slight modifications, which started to earn good results, they said.
The red gram pulse variety, developed at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), New Delhi, enables dense plant population.
High density planting is important to realise higher yield and mechanisation. Traditional varieties do not allow high density planting.
