National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) under Tribal Development Fund (TDF) has extensively been involved in development of livelihood of farmers in Chickballapur district of Karnataka through promoting horticulture crops. NABARD has sponsored several programmes and executed through non-governmental organizations (NGOs) like NRDS etc. Recently, ICAR-Indian Institute of Horticultural Research, Bengaluru has got the project on “Horticulture Technology Promotion Programme for enhanced productivity, quality and marketability of horticultural Crops" in NABARD promoted villages of Chickballapur District. Under this project various need-based activities were undertaken like introduction of rainfed orchards of mango, guava, custard apple etc. As a part of capacity building on good agricultural practices, a skill demonstration programme on canopy management of Mango orchards was undertaken on September 16, 2020. There is a large acreage of Banganapalli Mango variety near Bagepalli area. But farmers have no much awareness about necessity and benefits of canopy management. In view of this, this programme on canopy management was contemplated.
Mr Atheequlla G A, Scientist and PI of the project welcomed all the participants to the programme and briefed about the objectives and activities of the programme. Dr Manjunath B. L, Principal Scientist, Division of Fruit Crops addressed the participants about the Good agricultural practices in Mango and other fruit crops. He briefly explained about various package of practices with respect to mango. He also dealt in detail about canopy management of Mango, how to prune, when to prune, what is the distance between branches for pruning, ideal season of pruning, post care of pruning etc.
Dr R Venkattakumar, Principal Scientist & Head (I/c), Division of Social Sciences & Training, appraised various extension activities of Indian Institute of Horticultural Research (IIHR). He also suggested NRDS and farmers to have Farmers producers Organization (FPO) sooner to reap the benefits of an FPO. Mr. Venkataravanaswamy, Director, NRDS, briefed about various collaborative activities of NRDS and IIHR. He told the farmers to leverage maximum technical benefits from IIHR.
Then, there was skill demonstration on canopy management in mango. Field assistants of IIHR, Mr. Somashekar and Mr. Gangaraju, demonstrated the pruning techniques. Bordeaux mixture application to the cut parts of the trees was also shown to the farmers. The farmers were very happy to see the before and after appearance of mango tree after pruning the canopy. They owed to undertake pruning not only mango but also in other fruit crops such as cashew, jamoon, gauva etc. More than 50 farmers participated in the skill demonstration and benefitted.
