The Punjab government has decided to set up a research and development centre for citrus fruits in collaboration with Tropicana Beverage Group, one of the largest juice companies in the world.
This was decided at a recent meeting between Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and Ramesh Vangal, president of the Asia-Pacific of Seagram Co Ltd, which owns the Tropicana Beverage Group. Under the proposed collaboration, Tropicana will set up a state-of-the-art research and development centre in Punjab, which will identify the processing varieties of citrus fruits suitable to the climate and the soil conditions in the state. The group will also set up modern plant propagation facilities, including green houses and screen houses, to produce disease-free planting material.
The proposed R&D centre will be run mostly by local experts, but will have the back-up support from the world-wide resource pool of the Tropicana Group.
According to an official press release, the proposed centre will work in co-operation with the Punjab Agriculture University. The group will also help PAU upgrade its laboratory facilities with the required analytical and phytopathology equipment.
Under the arrangement, there are plans to set up demonstration plots in different regions of the state. The state government is hopeful that the proposed centre will help improve the orchards as well as the quality and the yield of citrus fruits in the state through improvements in agronomic practices.
The government is optimistic that with the introduction of new processing varieties of citrus fruits, the horticulture business in the state will get a boost and become commercially attractive.
The committee on diversification of agriculture, set up by the Punjab government a few years ago, had recommended the government should make efforts to motivate farmers to shift from foodgrains, particularly the wheat-paddy rotation to horticulture.
The committee was headed by farm expert S S Johal, former vice-chancellor of the Punjabi University, Patiala.
The state government is worried over the fate of citrus fruit growers, as the profitability of kinnow, the main variety of citrus fruit in the state, has been declining. Kinnow is a table fruit and is not considered fit for processing. As a result, no large processing industries for orange juice have come up in Punjab.
In the absence of any processing facility, the whole fruit has to be marketed and the prices of this fruit have been declining over the years.
Over the past few years, the state government has been trying to introduce better processing varieties of kinnow but without much success.
After the collaboration with Tropicana, which had a turn-over of over Rs 12,000 crore in 1997, the government is hopeful to give a boost to fruit growers in the state. Last year, Tropicana had processed two million tonnes of oranges.
Tropicana has also been expanding its business with China, providing technical assistance, including cultivation of the right variety or oranges. It is setting up a technical centre in China, besides green houses and screen houses.
