TN foodgrain production will touch 100 lakh tonne this year

Chennai, Apr 3 (UNI) Tamil Nadu's foodgrain production is expected to touch 100 lakh tonne this year, State Agriculture Minister Veerapandi S Arumugam told the Assembly today.

Replying to a debate on the demand for grants for his department, he said food grain production had not been affected due to shrinking of agricultural land. The present production of 96.04 lakh MT, including 78.01 lakh MT of paddy, was expected to reach 100 lakh MT by the end of this agricultural year, he added.

Mr Arumugam said the state's paddy productivity was 3,628 tonne per hectare, which could be the highest in the country.

He said Tamil Nadu had also ranked first in sugarcane productivity for the past several years. Sugarcane was cultivated usually in an area of 2.75 to three lakh hectare, which constituted about two per cent of total cultivated area of the state.

The average annual production of cane was 320 lakh MT, while prouctivity ranged from 95 MT per hectare to 105 MT per hectare.

The Minister said Genetic Engineering Approval Committee had approved the commercial cultivation of Bt cotton hybrids developed by various cotton seed producers in Tamil Nadu.

He said state level and district level Bt cotton monitoring teams had been constituted to assess the performance of Bt cotton cultivated and tried in the state.

Performance reports were being regulary sent to the Department of Biotechnology with regard to commercial cultivation as well as field trials on Bt cotton, he added.

UNI