Research, oriented towards meeting the challenges posed by climate change in the farm sector, would have to be given priority, V.A. Parthasarathy, Director of the Indian Institute of Spices Research (IISR) said on Monday.He was speaking at an interactive session with mediapersons at a meeting for “mobilising media support for sharing agro-information” at IISR in Chelavoor. He said climate change would be a major challenge for agriculture scientists since States like Orissa would become unfit for growing ginger in the near future because of changes in climatic conditions there.“Such research is not new. IISR scientists have already developed drought-resistant varieties of spices like pepper,” he said.
About the problems of pepper growers he said large-scale replanting of pepper was needed to improve productivity in the State. IISR was already engaged in programmes to ensure availability of high-quality pepper cuttings for replanting.“Evolving varieties through research and releasing them for use of farmers take long, say around 15 years. Rigorous and time consuming tests had to be completed before a new variety can be released,” he said.It had been found replanting was the best way to improve productivity since nearly 48 per cent of pepper vines in the State were “senile.” He denied reports which spoke of scarcity of pepper cuttings for replanting.“Farmers will get them if they approach agencies like IISR which are engaged in producing good quality pepper vines,” he said, adding that problems of pepper growers were getting serious attention of farm scientists.
Dr. Parthasarathy pointed out that there was an urgent need to improve pepper productivity. Vietnam had become the biggest pepper producer pushing back India to the second place. Other countries were also engaged in programmes to boost pepper output. These included raising monoculture pepper plantations instead of as an inter-crop as was the practice in Kerala.
The Hindu, November 10th , 2009
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