Tata Trust-PAU extends Basmati project

Amritsar, Aug 5: After successfully cultivating Basmati in two villages of this district last year, Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), Ludhiana in collaboration with Sir Rattan Tata Trust has now extend its 'Promote Basmati' project to 300 villages of Amritsar, Tarn Taran and Gurdaspur districts.

Under this project, this year 900 acres of farmers' fields in 30 villages of the three districts have been brought under Basmati cultivation, Amritsar Chief Agriculture Officer P S Sandhu said here today.

The project was launched last year in Waniyeke and Kamaske of Chogawan block of Amritsar district. Three hundred acres in the traitional Basmati growing areas in each of the three districts have been selected for the project this season, Mr Sandhu said.

While the funding for the project is by Sir Rattan Tata Trust, the expertise if being provided by PAU, Ludhiana. As this crop is photo thermal sensitive, many farmers used to transplant the crop early in last week of June or first week of July, as a result the quality of the grains gets deteriorated due to high temperature.

"They were asked not to transplant the crop before mid July if they wanted a higher yield", Mr Sandhu said.

Pointing out that almost all basmati growers were planting only 15-20 plants per sq meter, the agriculture officer said that the farmers under guidance have now planted 33 plants per square meter to get a higher yield.

The farmers in the selected villages who were using 50-60 kg of urea were made aware about the ill effects of excessive fetilizers.

Therefore, they hav been advised to apply 18 and 36 kg urea in two splits to Basmati 386 and Super Basmati, respectively.

In this way crop does not lodge and attack of pest is also less which ultimately leads to higher yield, Mr Sandhu added.

Pointing out that farmers normally do not differentiate between paddy and basmati in respect irrigation and keep flooding their Basmati field like paddy, Mr Sandhu said that they were told that it requires only half the number of irrigations as compared to paddy and this helps save water. The Basmati growers have been asked to spray their crop as per the PAU recommendations and they were told about different insect pests and diseases, like rice stem borer.

The farmers of Kamaske and Waniyeke villages which were brought under the project last year were mainly following wheat and paddy crop rotation, as they believed it was more remunerative. However the impact of the project was so clear that farmers of the two villages said that after adopting PAU recommendations, they saved the extra expenditure on irrigations, fertilizers and insecticides as compared to the prevailing farming practices.

The farmers were satisfied with the yield level of the crop, which ranged between 10 to 15 quintal per acre.The farmers of all the 300 villages under the project this year are hopeful of a yield higher than what they normally used to get.

UNI