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G. Gurumurthy

Aims at improving yield per acre, quality; helps to cut production costs

Coimbatore , Aug 4

Syngenta India, an agri-business company that offers crop protection solutions, has tied up with Super Spinning Mills Ltd (SSML) to introduce "Quantity & Quality" (Q&Q) project in cotton under contract farming in Tamil Nadu.

The two companies have successfully tried out, what they call, the `Syngenta Q&Q' programme aimed at enhancing the per acre yield and the quality of cotton through a designed solution package extended by Syngenta.

Having tested the crop solution concept in Super Spinning's R&D farm last year, it was introduced as a pilot project on 500 acres contracted by the SSM in Salem district's Edapadi tract to raise "Surabhi" and MCU-5 varieties as summer crops.

The significance of the crop solution technology offered to the growers, according to Mr R. Subramaniam, Project Co-ordinator and senior technical manager of Syngenta India, is that it is centred around seed treatment aimed at improving germination (between day zero and day 45) and monitoring the plant between the "day 45 and day 100" when cotton plants are vulnerable to pests attacks, especially the "pink bollworms". This is done through a combination of precision farming and integrated crop management (ICM).

The crucial "flowering, boll-formation and busting" stages are subjected to rigorous monitoring to not miss out on identifying the pest eggs and application of right quantity insecticides to avoid pests developing resistance.

This helps to bring down the application of pesticides in the contracted farms to just six rounds from the conventional 10 rounds, said Mr Subramaniam, who claimed this had resulted in the total production cost coming down by Rs 3,000 an acre. (An average cost of Rs 10,000 an acre was incurred against the normal Rs 13,000/14,000).

SSML, which provided the inputs like seeds, also arranged micro-finance for the farmers through State Bank of India and offered guaranteed buyback at premium price. The project was supported under the front-line demonstration of the technology mission on cotton (TMC), which financially supports popularising spreading of the good crop practices.

SSML sources said the company intended to extend the project to other areas in Tamil Nadu (Vazhukuparai), Hubli (Halihal) in Karnataka and Jammiguntta in Andhra Pradesh.

More Stories on : Cotton | Alliances & Joint Ventures | Contract Farming

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