HYDERABAD: The Covid pandemic has not only changed our day-to-day habits, but has also influenced our thoughts and innovations. While it gave ample time for people and institutions to build things using new methods, a college professor took the road less travelled and transformed a barren and undulated land allotted to his institute into an instructional farm for students and farmers.
Established in 2007, the College of Horticulture in Mojerla, Wanaparthy district, was allotted 50 acres of land for the development of an instructional farm in Madanapuram, an area infamous for illegal transportation of soil. At that time, the uneven government land was being exploited by locals in various ways.
After the allotment, a compound wall was built in 2019 and during the pandemic, hundreds of different varieties of fig, mango, pomegranate and moringa (drumstick) saplings were planted in 11 acres, with respect to the soil type. By then a huge pit had formed in the middle of the land, thanks to the illegal extraction of soil by miscreants. The professor turned it into a small pond to harvest rainwater, supported by a borewell, to supply water to the saplings through drip irrigation which could be operated remotely. A waste recycling unit was also set up, using on-farm drop-offs like leaves and other organic matter and using microbial consortium to decompose it.
“We divided the land based on the suitability of crop and went for raised bed cultivation for fruits to prevent waterlogging in low-lying parts. We used nano fertilisers on the foliage and not on the soil, in addition to vermicompost,” says J Shankaraswamy, assistant professor in fruit science, who has been leading the effort. Flaxseed-made boosters were given to the plants for increasing their endurance capacity so that they could resist biotic and abiotic stresses.
Within a year, the three fig varieties — punafly, turkey brown and deanna — became ready for harvest and the next step taken was to establish a post-harvest lab for value addition to figs by producing various products such as jellies, chips and dried anjeer, among others. Meanwhile, dragon fruits were planted using GI wires and plastic threads instead of iron poles to provide support the plants and to reduce the cost of cultivation. Plans are afoot to grow vegetables for seed production in inter-cropping pattern.
Professor Shankaraswamy adds that they collected coloured amaranthus (nucuna purience) and has been growing the same on the farm. The genome sequence of this has been included in the National Centre for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) database.