Haryana to produce 325 lakh quintals of sugarcane

Karnal, Dec 21 (UNI) The Haryana government has set a target to crush 325 lakh quintals of sugarcane and produce 30 lakh quintals of sugar during the current crushing season, Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda said today.

Last year, 96 lakh quintals of sugarcane were crushed to produce 18 lakh quintals of sugarcane, said Mr Hooda while interacting with the farmers after inaugurating a Tissue Culture Laboratory and Kisan Sewa Kendra in the complex of Co-operative Sugar Mills here.

Mr Hooda said the tissue culture laboratory was the first of its kind in North India in which about five lakh plants would be produced every year and these would be supplied to the farmers and other cooperative sugar mills in the state.

By adopting the new technique, the possibility of disease among the plants would be eliminated and the farmers would get the benefit of the new technique within two or three years as against 10 to 12 year earlier.

He said with the new tissue culture technique, 10,000 plants could be prepared from one plant of sugarcane during one year. On the other hand, only 10 plants could be produced from an equal number of plants with the old method.

The Chief Minister said the area under sugarcane crop had been increased from 2.14 lakh acres to 2.44 lakh acres and the target of production of sugarcane had also been enhanced from 220 quintals per acre to 250 quintals per acre.

He said the farmers in the state had been given an additional benefit of Rs 30 crore with the highest sugarcane price of Rs 138 per quintal given by the State Government. The rate of interest on crop loans has been slashed to seven per cent thus benefitting the farmers to the tune of Rs 108 crore.

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