Telangana government is planning to promote one of the popular tuber crops tapioca cassava, karra pendalam, with a view to encourage farmers to diversify from water-intensive paddy crop and cultivate it as a commercial horticultural crop in the irrigated-dry method.
Minister for Agriculture S. Niranjan Reddy along with a team of officials visited the Tapioca and Castor Research Station of Tamil Nadu Agricultural University at Yethapur near Salem on Tuesday to study the cultivation of crop. He was accompanied by Managing Director of Telangana State Seed Development Corporation K. Keshavulu and others.
The study has been taken up to encourage farmers to go for crop change with an aim to improve their income by diverting from traditional crops with which they were unable to get the expected income, an official of the visiting team said. Stating that there was huge demand for tapioca in the national and international markets, the official said it could be cultivated as an irrigated-dry crop and achieve high yield.
Officials at the research station explained to the Minister that tapioca is main raw material in the production of 18 products, including sago (suggu biyyam/sabudaana), starch powder, chips, textile industry and others. With a crop period 7 months to 10 months, production up to 12 tonnes per acre could be achieved as a rain-fed crop and up to 15 tonnes as an irrigated-dry crop, they stated.
The Minister said Telangana government was planning to promote the tuber crop as part of its plans to set up crop colonies and encourage farmers to diversify from the traditional crops. As part of such plan they had already decided to encourage oil palm cultivation in the erstwhile Mahabubnagar district areas. The government would encourage the farmers to go for tapioca crop and explore the opportunities of establishing a processing unit in the event the cultivation crossed 1,000 acres.
Stating that tapioca is cultivated on a large scale in South Africa, the research station officials told the visiting team from Telangana that it is being cultivated in about 2 lakh hectares in India with about 80% of it in Tamil Naud and Kerala. Farmers in other States, including Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Puducherry, Odisha, Nagaland, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Assam, Lakshadweep and Andaman & Nicobar Islands, in smaller extents. The current market price of the crop was in the range of ₹8,000 to ₹12,000 per tonne.
The Minister stated that a field visit for awareness of the farmers would be organised soon on tapioca cultivation. The government would also promote castor seed production in the erstwhile Mahabubnagar district as its products were used in making soaps, oils and ointments.