Sambalpur University plants hope for profit for Odisha banana growers

Saplings produced at the banana tissue culture facility of Sambalpur University would be provided to the farmers at a lower rate which will earn them good profit, writes Mayank Bhusan Pani

SAMBALPUR: The banana tissue culture facility, set up recently at Sambalpur University, has brought up new hopes for farmers of the region. They no longer have to depend on Andhra Pradesh for good-quality banana plants.

Established under the department of Biotechnology and Bioinformatics and funded by NABARD, the facility is spread over an area of 1,860 sq ft and can produce 50,000 tissue culture banana plants in a season. Aimed at promoting and commercialising banana cultivation in Western Odisha, farmers will be provided the saplings at low cost, said HoD of the department Pradeep Kumar Naik.

“Currently, farmers of the region are sourcing tissue-cultured banana plants from Andhra Pradesh, which costs them around Rs 23 per sapling. While the production cost of the sapling is only Rs  6 to Rs 7, in the absence of adequate facilities in the region, farmers have to shell out more money towards transportation cost,” he said.

Through the new facility, tissue culture saplings will be available at Rs 13 or Rs 15 per sapling. Besides, the department will provide hands-on-training to farmers on cultivation free of cost.“In addition, through plant tissue culture, the fruit is produced four months earlier and ensures uniform fruiting compared to that in traditional methods. Therefore, the disease free banana saplings produced through tissue culture technique are very much viable and will generate a lot of income for the marginalised farmers,” Naik said.

Farmers can cultivate the crop as per their schedule and obtain the yield in a short span of time. At the tissue culture facility in the university, the banana sapling is developed in a controlled environment within a greenhouse. The first batch of 10,000 saplings will be ready soon.

Currently, the university is growing the G9 variety of banana which is very much in demand in western Odisha. For this purpose, the university has engaged seven resource persons at the facility. A few organisations have also been roped in to identify existing and new banana farmers who have vacant land and irrigation facilities to take up tissue culture banana farming. The university has also developed a booklet in Odia to help farmers understand the cultivation process.

Explaining the economy behind banana farming, the department HoD said tissue culture banana cultivation over an acre of land needs an investment of Rs 1 lakh which will yield a production of 25,000 kg of banana. The produce can be sold for Rs 6.25 lakh at an average selling price of Rs 25 per kg in the region. So, a farmer can make a profit of Rs  5.25 lakh per hectare of land through farming of tissue cultured banana, which will augment the livelihood of thousands of banana farmers in the region.

If the existing facility is expanded further, the production can be increased up to about one lakh plants per year by creating additional tissue culture rooms. University authorities said if the facility yields good response, the facility can also be used for the culture of papaya and moringa.

Benefits of Tissue Culture Banana
 Early harvesting
 Uniform fruiting and maturity of the fruits
 Disease free crop
 High quality fruit bunches
Can be grown round the year