Success story on Management in Production Problems of Orange in West Garo Hills of Meghalaya.
Tarun Kr Das, A.S. Singh, N. Arun Kr Singh & Tanmay Samajdar KVK, ICAR, West Garo Hills, Meghalaya
Introduction:
Among horticulture fruit crop, orange is dominantly grown in most hilly belts of West Garo Hills district of Meghalaya. The trend analysis of the crop through PRA revealed that the area under orange is increasing rapidly, as the farmers prefer this fruit crop. The agro climatic condition of the district generally falls under sub-tropical hill climatic zone where some villages situated in high altitude areas are very much suitable for cultivation of orange. The village Sasatgre is under Rongram Block of West Garo Hills District of Meghalaya which is 45 km away from KVK, Tura and its lies between latitude 25032'7"N and longitude 90019'28.3"E with an elevation of 870 m above MSL having very suitable climatic condition for growing of fruits crops like Orange, Pears, Plum, Lemon etc. Majority of farmers of this village mainly grows and depends on these horticultural fruit crops for their livelihood. Other plantation crops like tea and some spices are also grown as secondary crops and bee keeping is also consider as one source for income generation in the village.Progressive farmers by name Sri Gonath Sangma and Sri Vidaline Marak of village Satsatgre mainly depends their livelihood on Orange cultivation. They had orchards with 458 and 532 nos. of Khasi Mandarin orange plants covering an area of 7.0 ha and 7.8 ha respectively. In addition to this, another 34 nos. of other families in the village are cultivating orange on an average of 20-25 nos. of plants per family.
Orange in Sasatgre village after management
Fruit dropping and fungal infestation plants
Problems Identified:
The North Eastern Region Community Resource Management Project under IFAD, Tura informed our KVK that the productivity of oranges in Satsatgre Village is decreasing day by day, due to fruit dropping and other fungal disease infestation. This situation had stressed to initiate the location specific problem solving practices. Therefore, a team of scientific staffs from KVK, West Garo Hills, Tura had visited the orchard of the village for proper thorough survey of its decline.Intervention implemented:
To overcome the problem of fruit dropping, KVK scientific personnel had identified the affected plants and demonstrated the farmers to sprayed with Bavistin (1 gm/ lit of water) along with 2, 4-D (10 ppm.) three times at an interval of 3 days at the time of peanut size of the fruits. It was observed that after treatment the problem of fruit dropping was reduced from 80% to 60% which results an increase in income of Rs.2,000/- per plant/farmer as compared to the previous year.Impact & Horizontal Spread
With the success of the technology 17 nos. of growers of the area were motivated and started the same for management of fruit dropping leading to good income generation for the villagers.
Spraying of fungicide in infested plants Bumper production of orange at Sasatge Bumper production of orange
