With the availability of water for irrigation following recent rain, the Agriculture Department officials have reset the yield projections for various food grains and set an ambitious production as well as acreage targets for Tirupur district.

It should be noted that the production and productivity were lean for the past two years in the case of food grains such as paddy, millets and pulses due to drought.

Targets

“Taking the water availability and an anticipated one more spell of monsoon into consideration, we have now pegged the production targets for food grains at 2.55 lakh metric tonnes during the current financial year from a computed acreage of 90,494 hectares under paddy and different varieties of pulses and millets,” said Joint Director of Agriculture Mohamed Iqbal.

During 2016-17 financial year, sowing of the said crops were done only over a total expanse of nearly 71,000 hectares in the district. Even from the sown areas, the productivity was low last year because of non availability of adequate water for irrigation.

Pulses

An example cited by the Agriculture Department officials was the yield of pulses which was abysmally low though the area under pulses technically stood on a moderately high of 17,548 ha.

“This year, we are expecting an average pulses yield of 730 kg per hectare from the projected area coverage of pulses varieties such as green gram, Bengal gram, black gram and cowpea, millet varieties like maize, cholam and pearl millets, and paddy,” pointed out Mr. Iqbal.

Strategy

The officials had adopted a multi-pronged strategy to attain the productivity targets which include dissemination of advanced cultivation techniques through village-level meetings, distribution of high yielding seeds at subsidised rates and helping the farmers to tackle the pests.