China: Chinese potato grader set to enhance income of farmers

...Chinese potato variety in Tirunelveli andTenkasi districts, has introduced a grader as part of its mechanization programme.

 Though demand for Chinese potato is huge in the southern districts, particularly during and after the northeast monsoon season, the short supply exponentially escalates the price of the tuber in the markets. Naturally, the farmers get good price for their produce during this season.

 To increase the yield of this much-sought after tuber crop, the Thiruvananthapuram-based Central Tuber Crops Research Institute (CTCRI), in collaboration with Department of Horticulture of Tirunelveli and Tenkasi districts, introduced a high-yielding Chinese potato variety, ‘Sree Dhara’, to the farmers. As this variety enjoyed good reception from the agriculturists owing to its disease resistance and high-yield strain, the CTCRI created ‘seed villages’ by training the farmers from Kuththapaanjaan and Rajangapuram villages of Tenkasi district and Ambasamudram in Tirunelveli district.

 The CTCRI scientists also established demonstration farms in these two villages to clarify the doubts of the farmers willing to go in for the cultivation of ‘Sree Dhara’ variety.

 Following this successful venture, the CTCRI organised training on ‘Stakeholders’ interface on mechanisation in Chinese potato at the Office of Assistant Director of Agriculture, Ambasamudram in the district on Thursday for the farmers of Ambasamudram and Kuththapaanjan in Alangulam block of Tenkasi district, in which the farmers were trained on grading the Chinese potato using a grader developed by CTCRI - Thiruvananthapuram.

 “Grading of Chinese potato tubers in uniform size will increase the value of the produce in both domestic and foreign markets. At present, Chinese potato tubers are now graded manually at the farm level that requires more labour, more time and naturally is more expensive. To avoid this labour-intensive exercise and save time, ICAR-CTCRI, Thiruvananthapuram recently developed a Chinese potato grader with a capacity of grading 1 tonne Chinese potato per hour, with which the farmers have been trained to grade the tuber,” said R. Muthuraj, principal scientist, CTCRI.

 Sheela Immanuel, Principal Scientist and Head, CTCRI, Thiruvananthapuram, explained in detail about the importance of tuber crops in agriculture which could easily augment the farmers’ income and M.S. Sajeev, Principal Scientist, CTCRI, stressed the importance of farm mechanisation in Chinese potato tubers for enhancing farming income.

 M. N. Sheela, Director, CTCRI, presided over the training session and introduced the newly developed Chinese potato grader to beneficiary farmers.

 T. Krishnakumar, Scientist, CTCRI, Thiruvananthapuram, who played a pivotal role in the development of the Chinese potato grader, explained in detail about the salient features of the grader.

 CTCRI scientists D. Jaganathan and P. Prakash explained about the advantages of going in for the cultivation of ‘Sree Dhara’ variety of Chinese potato