Of 2.8 mn hectares, 58% potential oil palm acreage lies in 5 states: ICAR

According to officials, the new mission plans to raise oil palm cultivation to one million hectares by 2025-26 and 1.7-1.8 million hectares by 2029-30.

The National Mission for Edible Oil-Oil Palm (NMEO-OP), which the Centre had launched a few months ago with an outlay of more than Rs 11,000 crore, might look to expand the maximum area under oil palm in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana in the south, and Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, and Tripura in the Northeast.

According to an assessment by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research-Indian Institute of Oil Palm Research (ICAR-IIOPR), of the 2.8 million hectares it identified for this last year, almost 58 per cent is in these five states, the government said in a reply to questions in Parliament.

That apart,