The Hindu Business Line : Drought-resistant cardamom on cards

THE Indian Cardamom Research Institute (ICRI), under the Spices Board, at Myladumpara in Kerala's Idukki district plans to develop pest, disease and drought-tolerant varieties of both large and small cardamom.

Through systematic efforts, high yielding clones of small cardamom such as ICRI-1 and 2 for Kerala, ICRI-3 for Karnataka and ICRI-4 for Tamil Nadu and ICRISikkim-1 and 2 for large cardamom were released to suit different agro-ecological situations, Dr J. Thomas, Director, ICRI, told Business Line.

"Very promising cardamom hybrids, which are comparable or even better than the ruling land race `Njallani' are in various stages of development. Apart from yield efforts are also focused on evolving pest, disease as well as drought-tolerant varieties", he said.

According to him, the ICRI has the largest germplasm repository of small and large cardamom. It had 670 accessions and 12 allied genera, he said.

The area under cardamom cultivation has come down from 1,05,000 hectare (ha) during 1987 to 72,451 ha today. In spite of the drop in area, production has gone up from 3,170 tonnes to 11,365 tonnes. The average productivity in a well- managed plantation has increased from 125 kg/ha to more than 2,500 kg/ha, he said.

However, intensive shade regulation opened up forest cover and excessive use of pesticides and chemicals polluted the environment making cardamom cultivation non-sustainable, he said.

Hence, the institute had been focussing its efforts to make cardamom sustainable. The integrated pest and disease management system developed and propagated is gaining acceptance among farmers, Dr Thomas said.

The ICRI, established in 1978, has played a pioneering role in formulating viable scientific management practices suiting to the agro-ecological situation of the cardamom tract.

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