Despite the rising need for horticultural crops in India, the horticultural sector is facing an acute shortage of quality planting material.
Further, inadequate storage and processing facility was leading to a high rate of wastage in this sector.
“The horticulture sector is facing an acute shortage of planting material as most of the nurseries are unorganised and government agencies are unable to provide adequate quantity of quality planting material to the farmers,” H P Singh, deputy director general, Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) said.
According to government estimates, hardly 30-40 per cent of the requirement of planting materials for horticultural crops is met through public sector agencies like state agricultural universities, state seed agencies and the Indian Institute of Horticultural Research (IIHR).
Horticulture contributes 30 per cent to the agricultural gross domestic product despite 10 per cent of land under them. Due to the rising importance of this sector, the Planning Commission has fixed seven per cent growth rate per annum for the sector as against four per cent for agricultural sector in this Plan period.
Further, the demand for this crop is also rising with the population growth and changing food habit of the people.
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“Demand for horticultural crops has increased from 400 million tonne in 1995 to the present level of 1,200 million tonne. Consumption of horticultural produce in average diet has also increased to 35 per cent from 10 per cent in last 30 years,” Singh said.
However, productivity is yet to rise to meet the ever-increasing requirement.
According to IIHR, multiplication of plants in fields instead of nurseries, distant transportation of plants with earth ball and selection of scion shoots (branch with multiplication capacity) from a diseased tree are some of the practices followed by the farmers which affect productivity.
“By 2012, the requirement of planting material for fruit plants will be 1.4 billion, for plantation crops 170 million and for vegetable seeds it would be 1.5 million tonnes,” Amrit Singh Sidhu, Director, IIHR said.
To meet the ever-increasing need for planting material, the government should have a uniform nursery rule for all states and Union Territories in the proposed Seed Act, he said.
The government is planning to formulate a new Seed Act by replacing Seeds Act, 1966. Though the proposed legislation was tabled in Parliament in 2004, it has been put in cold storage since that time.