In a bid to make available disease-free planting material at affordable prices to farmers, the Spices Board has set up a new biotech production unit at its Kochi campus and Dipak Chatterjee, secretary to the Department of Commerce, Government of India, would inaugurate the same on Friday.
Disclosing this here today, the Spices Board chairman C J Jose said that the unit would have a capacity to produce four lakh tissue culture spice plantlets per year.
Vanilla would be the first crop taken up and in the secondary stage crops like small cardamom, large cardamom, cloves and garcinia would be taken up.
The proposed tissue culture programme for vanilla is being implemented in association with the Kudumbhasree Kerala State Poverty Eradication Mission, which is targeting the upliftment of women from below the poverty line.
The board has already imparted training to nominees from various Kudumbhasree units in its tissue culture laboratory.
The trained hands will assist the Spices Board in tissue culture multiplication programme. This project is expected to cover an area of 1,250 hectares in Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and other states during the Tenth Five Year Plan period.
