Badal orders setting up of five Citrus Estates

Chandigarh, July 3 (UNI) Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal today ordered the setting up of five Citrus Estates to bring an area of over 18,000 acres in 400 villages in Punjab under citrus cultivation in 2007.

This would be the most ambitious diversification project ever undertaken in a single year with a deadline of just 30 days.

The conceptual plan and outlay of the project, which comes under the state government's horticulture mission, was approved by the Chief Minister at a meeting of progressive farmers and senior bureaucrats here today.

In another significant step, the government decided to provide subsidy on Drip Irrigation up to 70 per cent of the total cost incurred by the farmers.

The five Citrus estates would be set up in citrus growing area of Tahliwala Jattan, Abohar, Badal, Hariana and Hoshiarpur.

This is a part of the government's new approach to shift agricultural focus away from water and soil depleting crop patterns and by encouraging non-conventional farm activity, including large scale citrus cultivation in the state.

A spokesperson of the Punjab government said here today that the five citrus estates to be set up in the Punjab would have Scientific Centres, Disease Preventive Centres and Citrus Nurseries in each estate.

The estate would provide latest and imported farm implements like Orange picker, pruning saw, harvesting and pruning ladders, pruners, power spray pumps, hydraulic pruner etc to the citrus farmers and Chief Minister sanctioned Rs 15 crore for importing latest farm equipments.

The government also decided to set up state-of-the-art laboratories in each of the citrus estate to conduct Research and Development in citrus. Two leaf analysis labs and two polyclinic labs would also be set up.

Conware was asked to set up three cold storages with 4,000 MT capacity whereas Mandi Board would set up two commodity based markets. Punjab Agriculture University has been asked to set up linkages with the horticulture department and industry and guide farmers in site selection soil quality, plant variety and Orchid layout.

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