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Our Bureau

Jain Irrigation bags order to send 66,000 by air

Mumbai June 7 Banana farmers in Oman can now look forward to bumper yields with Jain Irrigation airlifting its first consignment of 10,000 tissue-cultured saplings to that country.

The Maharashtra-based agro-technology major said the first lot of a total order of 66,000 saplingss had left Indian soil on Thursday. An Oman-based agro company Dohfar Group had placed the order.

Export Target

"About 10,000 plants will be dispatched every third or fifth day from now on," Mr Ajit Jain, Joint Managing Director of Jain Irrigation, said. The company has set an export target of 3 million for the year with enquiries coming in from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Africa and the West Asia.

While traditional banana plants bloom in 16 to 18 months, tissue cultured ones flower in 11 months and Jain Irrigation's "Grand-Nain variety" yield is said to be 375 per cent more than the traditionally grown variety.

Oman farmers cultivate the traditional low-yield Cavendish variety.

Since banana demand is very high in the West Asia, imports from the Philippines and South American countries make up the shortfall. Oman alone imports about 10-lakh plants a year.

Banana Yield

"The Oman-based agriculture company had tested a variety of tissue culture banana plants before zeroing in on the plants developed by us.

Through this export Jain Irrigation is spearheading bio-technology exports from India. Exporting this technology is the next step," said Mr Ashok Jain, Vice-Chairman, Jain Irrigation Systems Ltd.

The company is supplying tissue-cultured banana plant to farmers in States such as Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Punjab and Orissa.

It says the biotechnology has increased banana yield by 375 per cent.

Overwhelming Response

The annual yield for traditional banana farming was about 24 tonnes a hectare in 1984-85 and drip irrigation had boosted it to 65 tonnes.

Tissue culture technology enhanced it further to 95 tonnes a hectare. The company introduced the biotechnology initiative in 1993-94 with a capacity to tissue culture 50,000 banana plants, which met with an overwhelming response from the farming community.

With continuous innovation and research it augmented its capacity to one crore tissue culture plants per annum. This capacity will be further expanded to address the growing demand, he said.

Mr Ajit Jain said the company will begin exporting tissue-cultured Jatropa to African countries and it is working on tissue cultured turmeric and ginger for domestic markets.

More Stories on : Horticulture/Fruits & Vegetables | Exports & Imports

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