A national workshop has called for expanding cultivation of spices to non-traditional areas considering the growth in the sector, despite Covid challenges.
Inaugurating the two-day workshop at the ICAR-Indian Institute of Spices Research, Jeet Singh Sandhu, Vice-Chancellor, SKN Agriculture University, Jobner, emphasised the need for giving more thrust to researches in the spices sector to improve value addition and increasing its export potential. He also underlined the need for breeding and mechanisation in spices.
Export demand rises
AK Singh, Deputy Director General of ICAR, New Delhi pointed out that better times are ahead for the spices as the export demand has risen at the global level. To improve the export growth, he suggested that research institutions should actively engage with the farming community to sensitise them with the market scenario and the government policies.
He also highlighted that research organisations need to study the impact of soil profile and micro-flora population on the quality of spices and also to undertake studies on mapping of non-traditional areas for commercial production of spice crops.
The two-day workshop noted that the export of many major spices has increased steadily in the pandemic times and called for the development of an ecology system based on soil and crop health management.
Vikramaditya Pandey, Assistant Director General of ICAR, stressed the need to address the gap in productivity of spices grown under different systems and also to concentrate on the emergence of new pests and diseases.
The Hisar centre of Chaudhary Charan Singh Haryana Agricultural University was conferred with the best AICRPS centre award for the year 2020-21.