Step taken by the Government of increase the country production of Lychee

New Delhi: The details of lychee production in various states of the country during the last three years and the current year, State and rank-wise is given below.

Several steps taken by the Government to increase the Country’s production of fruits and vegetables including lychee are as under:

• Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture (MIDH), a Centrally Sponsored Scheme is being implemented during XII Plan w.e.f. 2014-15, for holistic growth of the horticulture sector covering all the horticulture crops including fruits and vegetables.

• The Mission envisages production and productivity improvement of horticulture crops including fruit and vegetable crops through increased coverage of area with improved cultivars, rejuvenation of senile orchards, protected cultivation, creation of water resources, adoption of Integrated Pest Management (IPM), Integrated Nutrient Management (INM), organic farming, including insitu generation of organic inputs. Capacity buildings of farmers and technicians is also provided for adopting improved technologies.

Details of related research and new schemes implemented by the Government are as under:

• The Government of India, Ministry of Agriculture, Cooperation & Farmers welfare has established National Research Centre on Lychee at Muzaffarpur in 2001 which is taking care of research needs for improving production and productivity of litchi in the Country along with monitoring and management of pests and diseases and development of protocol to reduce the post-harvest loss in lychee fruits.

• The Centre in collaboration with AICRP-Fruits, is monitoring the location specific research on litchi in six states which are Sabour in Bihar, Mohanpur in West Bengal, Ranchi in Jharkhand and Firojpur in Punjab, Kodugu in Karnataka along with central monitoring of research activities from ICAR-NRC on Litchi, Muzaffarpur wherein the Director of the Centre is functioning as Crop Coordinator for Lychee.  Additionally, the Govt. has also opened/in process of opening voluntary Centres of lychee research in Ambikapur (Chhattisgarh), Medjifema (Nagaland), Araku (Andhra Pradesh), Kangra (Himachal Pradesh).

• For improvement in production, the ICAR-NRC on Litchi has developed protocol for Good Agricultural Practices and also imparting training and developing skills to various stakeholders for development of quality plant material and adopting Good Agricultural Practices.

• The Centre is operating network project on management of fruit borers, National Training Programme on rejuvenation of litchi orchard, AICRP on Honey Bee for improvement in pollination, collaborative programme with BARC to enhance shelf life of litchi fruits and area expansion scheme in non-traditional and tribal regions which in turn will improve the production of litchi in different parts of the Country.

Annexure 

Source: Horticulture Statistics Division, Department of Agriculture, Coopn & FW

This information was given by the Minister of State for Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Shri Parshottam Rupala, in reply to a question in Lok Sabha today.