Date:13/12/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/12/13/stories/2007121361950900.htm

Tamil Nadu

Plan to increase area under coconut

Staff Reporter

TUTICORIN: The Department of Agriculture plans to increase the area under coconut by 600 hectares and production by 11 per cent during this financial year.

S. Arumugam, Joint Director of Agriculture, said Rs. 8,000 per hectare in subsidy would be offered to growers to buy quality seedlings. The money would come from a corpus created by the Coconut Development Board, a statutory body under the Government of India, under its area expansion scheme. Farmers who brought a minimum of 0.2 hectare of new cropped area under coconut, or plant a minimum of 30 seedlings, would be eligible for the subsidy. Furthermore, the incentive, which would be in two instalments, was meant only for those who did not have more than four hectares under coconut.

The farmer should obtain the seedlings through the farms of the Coconut Development Board, the Central Plantation Crops Research Institute or State Government nurseries, he said.

Mr. Arumugam said that to increase the production, steps were being taken to distribute high-quality seedlings raised on the department nursery at Killikulam near here.