L-G Inaugurates Mega Fruit Plant Nursery in Jammu & Kashmir

"The Nursery will provide the best technologies as well as true-to-type quality planting material that will reshape the horticulture sector in the area," L-G Manoj Sinha said after the inauguration.

Sinha went on to say that this decade in agriculture and horticulture belongs to J&K UT. "Through a holistic development plan, the policies have laid the foundations for a sea change in J&K's economic growth," Sinha said.

"The effort is to make subtropical fruit cultivation a multi-faceted business by increasing orchard efficiency through various interventions such as the establishment of new nurseries and plant material testing labs," Sinha explained.

"Our endeavour is also to convert farm and orchard potential into farmer power and transform all districts of both Jammu and Kashmir divisions into export hubs through niche crop cultivation and value addition of special products," Sinha added.

Prof. JP Sharma, VC of SKUAST Jammu, emphasised the importance of converting low density orchards to high density orchards in order to increase farmer income through horticulture.

The Mega Fruit Plant Nursery has 50 different blocks for growing mother plants of various fruits, including citrus. The Mega Fruit plant nursery will grow and provide saplings of Guava, mango, litchi, other citrus fruits, and Dragon fruit over an area of more than 800 Kanal.

It is North India's largest fruit nursery. Farmers will receive 10 lakh fruit plant saplings in the near future.

In addition to other advanced facilities and modern equipment, a micro irrigation system was installed in the mega fruit nursery for irrigation. It was announced that a tissue culture lab and other labs would be established in the near future.