Tata trust adopts 2 Punjab villages for groundnut cultivation

Ludhiana, May 29 (UNI) Under the Green Revolution revival project, Sir Ratan Tata Trust, Mumbai has entered into a collaboration with the Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) and adopted two villages Mechanisation of groundnut cultivation operations is an integral part of the Rs 23 lakh project and the trust has provided planters, diggers and threashers to the farmers of the two villages.

The groundnut crop would be sown on 40 acres in the two villages and closely monitored by village level workers under the expertise of PAU scientists and Trust representatives.

Director of Extension Education, Dr S S Gill visited the two villages last week to oversee the project and participate in the groundnut ''field day''. He also met the Trust representatives, Amarjit Lal Sharma and Harinder Chug.

According to Dr Gill healthy groundnut crop was a promising start to the project, which also focuses on 'water management and hardy weeds'.

Dr Gill said groundnut fetches good price in the market and it was Rs 1520 per quintal last year. The farmers of the two villages have been assured of compensation if groundnut is sold below the minimum support price.

In Punjab, groundnut is sown on nearly 4,300 hectares of land with an average yield of 905 kgs per hectare. Last year, the production of groundnut was around 3,600 tonnes.

He said besides selling groundnut straw, farmers could save by extracting oil for domestic use and also use the groundnut cake for the livestock.

He further said given the yield potential of the recommended varities of groundnut, farmers could recover upto 60 kgs kernels from one quintal groundnut and extract about 21 kgs oil from these kernels which could be used for domestic purposes.

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