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Experts from different sectors have urged the Central Arecanut and Cocoa Marketing and Processing Cooperative (Campco) Ltd to leverage its infrastructure and network to explore the potential of jackfruit in the country.
Speaking at the ‘formation day’ celebrations of Campco in Mangaluru on Wednesday, Shree Padre, a progressive farmer who has been creating awareness on the potential of jackfruit for more than a decade, said that most grower- members of Campco have jackfruit trees in their plantations and backyard.
He said that though jackfruit has many nutritional and medicinal properties, it has remained a neglected fruit.
Campco has more than 1 lakh growers as members. Campco — which has been procuring and marketing arecanut, cocoa, rubber and pepper — should also consider including jackfruit in this list. Such a move will make the growers take up the cultivation of this fruit in earnest.
Stating that Kerala has started exploring the potential of jackfruit, he said many enterprises on jackfruit have come up in that State, and its women self-help group initiative – Kudumbashree – is also involved in exploring the potential of the fruit. Apart from this, the Kerala government has adopted this as its official fruit.
Delivering the ‘formation day’ address, Vigneshwara Varmudy, agro-economist who has published several research papers on the arecanut market, said that value-added jackfruit products have a good market. Campco, which has a wide network of procurement and marketing centres and infrastructure for processing, can make use of them for exploring the potential of jackfruit.
Varmudy also said that the cooperative should begin procurement of coconut from its grower-members and come out with coconut-based products.
Replying to the opinions of the experts, SR Satishchandra, Campco’s President, said that the co-operative will take these suggestions seriously. Process has already begun to set up a coconut processing plant. Preparation of a project report is in progress in this regard, he said.
L Thimmappa Hegde, Founder-Director of the co-operative, recalled the problems faced by farmers during the 1970s. To tackle the problems then, the late Varanashi Subraya Bhat established the cooperative in 1973, he said.
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