For a water-starved district like Vellore, cultivation of millets is suitable, say experts. The Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK), Vrinjipuram, is encouraging farmers to take up millet cultivation.
M. Pandiyan, Professor and Head, Agricultural Research Station and KVK, said that for several years, farmers had been cultivating millets in various parts of the district.
Minor millets
“Vellore and Tiruvannamalai are among the top districts where minor millets are cultivated on a large scale (at least 2,000 hectares of land in Vellore), particularly at the places such as Alangayam, Yelagiri and Javadhu hills,” he said.
Farmers in Javadhu Hills have been traditionally cultivating minor millets.
Minor millets include “samai” (little millet), “thinai” (foxtail millet), “varagu” (Kodo millet), “kuthiraivaali” (barnyard millet) and “pani varagu” (proso millet).
“Samai” was cultivated most in Vellore followed by “thinai”, he said.
“We have seen that disease occurrence was less in millets and there is no need for pesticides and use fertilisers. Organic fertilisers are more than enough for millets,” he added.
One-day programme
In a step towards encouraging farmers to take up millet cultivation, the KVK conducted a one-day capacity building programme on modern Technologies in millets production on Thursday. Fiftyfive farmers participated.
Training in understanding the scope and potential of millet cultivation, high-yielding varieties and season for millet cultivation, technologies for enhancing millet productivity in maize, sorghum, cumbu, ragi, panivaragu and samai and value addition in millets was conducted.
Booklet
A booklet on millet cultivation techniques was given to farmers, a press release said. Mr. Pandiyan said that the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore had come up with high-yielding varieties and recommended to farmers to use these varieties.
