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KOCHI, Jan. 3

WITH the objective of making disease-free planting materials available to farmers at affordable prices, the Spices Board set up a new biotech production unit at its headquarters here on Friday.

The Union Commerce Secretary, Mr Dipak Chatterjee, inaugurated the new unit, with a capacity to produce 4 lakh tissue culture spice plantlets per year. Vanilla will be the first crop that will be taken up now and crops such as small and large cardamom, cloves and garcinia will be given attention in the second stage.

Lauding the efforts to popularise the vanilla cultivation in view of its tremendous scope for exports, Mr Chatterjee reminded the board that the ultimate aim of the unit should be to provide better quality seeds to farmers to enhance productivity. Since it is a long-term sustainable market, the growers' interest should also be protected. Kerala is an ideal State to promote vanilla cultivation because two-third of its areas were already under agricultural production, he said.

Mr C.J. Jose, Chairman of the Spices Board, said the objective of the board was to make India the biggest producer of vanilla and the Tenth Plan proposals targeted a big push to its export-oriented production. Pending approval of the Plan proposals, it had started popularising the crop by building confidence among the growers and imparting crop management skills to them.

It has been decided to support vanilla cultivation in around 5,000 hectares as against 200 hectares in the Ninth Plan of small and marginal holdings. It was also anticipated that private initiative could lead to an additional 10,000 hectares. When all the proposed acreage begins to yield in about 6 years, India would be biggest global producer and exporter of this crop, he said.

The current tissue culture programme for vanilla is being implemented in association with the Kudumbhasree Kerala State Poverty Eradication Mission. The board has imparted training to nominees from various Kudumbhasree units in its tissue culture lab and they will assist in tissue culture multiplication programme.

It was also decided to forge a similar alliance with the primary milk producers of co-operatives and their farmer members through the district dairies of Ernakulam, Kozhikode and their apex body, Milma.

The tissue culture plantlets developed in the production unit will be hardened in nurseries operated by the Kudumbhasree units across Kerala and will eventually be distributed to small and marginal farmers including those belonging to the Kudumbhasree units. Similar arrangements for hardening plantlets were also proposed with the constituent units of the Milma in Kerala.

This project is expected to cover an area of 1,250 hectares in Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and other states during Tenth Plan period. The production unit will initiate tissue culture multiplication programme by growing buds collected from high yielding vanilla vines on the nutrient media.

As per the protocol developed, a multiplication ratio of 1:25 in 45 days time is expected. Primary hardening of plantlets will be done for about 4-6 weeks in net pots. By the time, the plant will attain a height of 10 cm with 5-6 leaves. These will be transferred to polybags for secondary hardening in the nursery units for about three months time by which time the plant will attain a height of 30 cm and will be ready for transplantation to the fields.

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