Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
supplying high quality vegetables in the niche markets of these cities but
also stabilizing the huge fluctuations in market prices of fresh vegetables
in these cities almost every year in India.
7.2 PLUG TRAY NURSERY RAISING TECHNOLOGY FOR
VEGETABLES
Quality seed and planting material always plays a vital role for improving
the productivity of vegetable crops. The lower productivity of vegetable
could be attributed due to inadequate availability of virus and disease free
healthy seedlings and unavailability of grafted planting material having
resistant root stocks against soil borne diseases in vegetable crops.
To ensure high productivity and high quality in vegetables, raising of
high quality virus free seedlings through the use of good planting mate-
rial at right time and at a appropriate place is one of the cheapest but most
important way. Most of the Indian farmers are raising their vegetable seed-
lings under open field conditions, which are always inferior in quality, as
the seedlings are infected with virus when raised in open during rainy and
post rainy season. On one side soil borne fungus and nematodes create
severe problem for raising the seedlings in soil media in open fields during
hot summers and rainy season but on the other hand the very high cost of
hybrid seeds in vegetables has also warranted the farmers to improve or
change their traditional nursery raising method to increase the productiv-
ity and quality of vegetables. Plug tray nursery raising in vegetable crops
has already working as a well established industry in several developed
countries. Under this system seedlings are raised in plastic multicelled
plug-trays in artificial soil-less media in especially designed greenhouses
or other protected structures (Singh et al., 2005). A large number of virus
free healthy seedlings of different vegetables can be raised in a small area
of green house in plastic plug-trays either for main season or for their off
season cultivation. With the use of this technology it is now almost pos-
sible to raise healthy vigorous seedlings of almost all vegetables. Unem-
ployed educated youths of our country can start nursery production as a
agri entrepreneur in major vegetable growing pockets of the country very
successfully. By this way the vegetable growers can get virus free or off-
season healthy nursery as per their requirement and it will also generate
additional employment in agriculture sector. Therefore, this is the first and
 
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