The Hindu Business Line : `Growing cashew can help eco restoration'

Cashew, a versatile tree crop, apart from being a commercial crop, could play several roles, such as, in eco-restoration, coastal and environmental protection, increasing the income of small farmers, employment generation for rural poor etc., if its significance is realised and schemes are introduced to cover the suitable stretches of wastelands in the country with this crop.

It can be grown on wastelands. That in turn would develop into a greenbelt protecting the environment besides controlling air pollution. "It is a tree crop and adapted to stressed ecosystems, Dr M. Abdul Salam, a reputed scientistand Prof and Chairman, Dept of Agronomy, College of Agriculture, Kerala Agriculture University, told Business Line.

The country has 6,31,518.31 sq. km of wastelands spread over 584 districts in 26 States and the Union Territories, according to official statistics. At least around 30 per cent of this area could be utilised for planting cashew, which can create long and vast stretches of green cover, besides arresting sea erosion in the coastal belt.

Tropical

According to him, cashew trees are genuinely tropical and very frost-sensitive. It grows in a wide spectrum of climatic regions. Yearly rainfall of 1,000 mm is sufficient for production but 1,500-2,000 mm can be regarded as optimal. The cashew tree has a well-developed root system and can tolerate drought conditions.

Rain during the flowering season causes flower abortion due to `anthracnose and mildew'.

According to him, the dense plantations developed in the wastelands could also produce large volume of cashew apple, a major raw material source, of late, for manufacturing bio-ethanol. Such a measure would increase raw cashew nuts production.

Increase in production of this raw material could totally remove the dependence of the 1.2 million tonne-cashew processing industry which imports almost 50 per cent of its requirements. It could create more employment opportunities for the rural poor.

Mr Vekitesh Hubballi, Director, Cashew and Cocoa Development under the Union Ministry of Agriculture, here told Business Line that the total area under cashew in 2007-08 was estimated at 8.68 lakh hectares spread over Kerala, Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, West Bengal and few other states in 2006-07.

The total production is estimated at 6.65 lakh tonnes of raw nuts with an average productivity of 860 kg a hectare, he said.

Eco-restoration

According to Dr Salam, cashew can be effectively used as a bio-shield along the coast, along with mangroves in suitable areas for both productive and protective services particularly for eco-restoration, eco-protection and eco-stabilisation as it has a deep and penetrating root system to deep soil layers.

The role of cashew plantations, especially dense, as a bio shield has been proved during the killer tsunami about four years ago when it hit the southern States, especially Tamil Nadu's Nagapattinam, Cuddalore regions.

Currently 20 per cent of the country's over one billion people reside on the coasts. As a result, most coastal habitats, as they are seen today, have either been degraded, modified or entirely created by human beings.

One of the most common man-made habitats that are seen along the entire coast of the country is mono-culture of casuarina trees.

Mature plantations that can serve as shelter belts are found only in the west coast.

Around Cuddalore and Puducherry, the dunes are more or less fully planted with cashew. These trees have a low and spreading canopy and have served the purpose of shelter-belts wherever they are, the report added.

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