Teri aids citrus fruit cultivation in Punjab

The Punjab Agri Export Corporation has received 46,000 virus-free tissue-cultured rootstock plants from the Tata Energy Research Institute (Teri).

It is a major breakthrough for the commercial cultivation of citrus in the state. The support from Teri came at a time when the cultivation of conventional crops were becoming unremunerative.

The germplasm of imported rootstock cultivars had been supplied to Teri by PAGREXCO and these were scientifically cultured at Teri's tissue culture facility and biotechnology laboratory.

For over a decade, the plant tissue culture group at Teri had been actively involved in the large-scale production of various plant species including forest species, fruit and vegetable crops and ornamentals using micro propagation technology.

In phases, Teri will supply 8,00,000 virus-free tissue cultured rootstock plants to Punjab by the end of 2006.

According to the CMIE report dated March,2005, the area under citrus cultivation in Punjab declined from 35,800 hactare in 1991-92 to 15,400 hactare in 2000-01.A significant drop in the production was also observed during this period, which declined nearly 32 per cent.

Punjab, with a tremendous potentiality for citrus farming, was facing an urgent need for large amounts of virus-free certified plant material, difficult to accumulate within a short period of time through conventional methods of propagation and open field cultivation.

Also, the nursery plants produced by most of the private nursery growers did not follow the scientific methods of disease indexing, resulting in some diseases being transmitted from the nursery stage.

According to Himmat Singh, managing director, Punjab Agri Export Corporation, "With the arrival of the virus-free cultured rootstock plants, commercial cultivation of citrus in Punjab is all set to get a major boost," he said.