Advanced variety of tomato by plastic mulching technique
Saroja, a woman farmer, earned a good income by growing an advanced variant of tomato, Know which vegetables Saroja grew with plastic mulching technique
The farmers who are always ready to do new experiments and adopt new technology in farming, their profit keeps increasing continuously. One such progressive woman farmer is Saroja, who is not only cultivating tomatoes with new plastic mulching technique, but has also become a role model for other farmers by growing multiple crops under plastic mulching.
When it all started?
Saroja is an educated woman farmer from Devarayapatna village in Tumkur district of Karnataka. She is a graduate and is cultivating vegetables and flowers along with her husband on 2 acres of farmland. In 2013-14, Krishi Vigyan Kendra Hirehalli told him about the improved varieties of vegetables and flowers. Since then, Saroja started cultivating improved varieties, the result of which was excellent. He started with the improved tomato variety Arka Samrat. She started its production under plastic mulching.
Tomato is the main commercial crop
Tomato is the main commercial crop of India. Tomato farmers also have to face the problems of climate change, pest and disease outbreaks, drought, drying up of borewells and shortage of labour. Late blight and leaf curl disease has emerged as a major problem for tomato crop in the last 3-4 years. At the same time, the farmers are facing a lot of difficulties due to the increase in the cost of cultivation. Saroja was no exception.
To address these problems KVK Hirehalli started demonstration of plastic mulching technique with drip irrigation in tomato crop under Front Line Demonstration (FLD) in his field during 2013-14. Mrs. Saroja used to grow ragi and paddy only in the earlier monsoons, as she was not aware of the high yielding crops. When she visited KVK, Hirehalli, the scientists informed her about the cultivation of Arka Samrat, an improved tomato variety with plastic mulching technique.
Tomato production increased
Based on the suggestion of scientists, he decided to cultivate tomato in summer and produced Arka Samrat, a hybrid variety of tomato in one acre with plastic mulching technique. Drip technology was adopted for irrigation. She often consulted scientists. Mulching helped in moisture conservation, weed suppression and maintenance of soil structure. Helps prevent wastage of fertilizers, as well as reduce pests and viral diseases.
It gave a good crop. After 65 days of sowing this tomato crop was ready and 32.50 tonnes of tomato was obtained per acre. Selling it at Rs 10 per kg, he sold about Rs 3.25 lakh per acre. The total cost of tomato cultivation came to Rs.60,000. In this way he made a profit of 2.65 lakhs.
Other farmers were also impressed by the plastic mulching technique as it was using less amount of water and manure. At the same time, there were no pests and diseases in the plants and the quality of the crop was also better. That’s why it was getting good price in the market.
Multiple Crop Suggestion
To get the most out of the investments made in mulch and drip irrigation, Mrs. Saroja was advised to grow multiple crops. The second crop after tomatoes was French beans. It was ready to harvest after 55 days of sowing and yielded 3.5 tonnes of beans per acre. Selling it at Rs 22 per kg, she earned a total income of about Rs 77,000. After deducting the cost, the income came to Rs.64,500.
After this she planted marigold flowers as the third crop. She planted the Arka Bangra variety, which was grown from cuttings and planted in the same poly mulch in which tomatoes and beans were grown. After 45 days, she got 1800 kg of flowers, which earned about Rs 36000 by selling it at Rs 20 per kg. There was a net profit of Rs 27,500 after deducting the cost. In this way, she got a net profit of about three and a half lakh rupees from all the three crops.
She got respect too
Mrs. Saroja received the Innovative Krishi Mahila Award from IIHR in 2014 for her achievements. Now she has emerged as an inspiration for other farmers of the area.
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