Make Separate Research Centres For Fruit Breeding Experiments

Dr. Chiranjeet Parmar

(The writer is a senior horticulture scientists)

Cultivation of apple and other fruits was started by foreigners, mostly Britishers barring one American, about 150 years ago in Himachal Pradesh. As usual, everyone of them used to import fruit varieties from their native places. Therefore fruit industry in Himachal started from the fruit plants imported from the above mentioned two countries. Apple variety from America became a favourite choice of people here and varieties of rest of the fruits came from England and America. Progeny orchards were established in different parts and agriculture department was constituted after Himachal Pradesh came into existence. Maximum varieties of different fruits were planted in these orchards.

However only those fruit varieties survived, climatic conditions for whom were favourable here. These orchards made one thing clear as to which place is suitable for a particular fruit. Future horticulture development programme was framed on the basis of this knowledge. All this happened about 60 years ago. No further action was taken in this direction thereafter. As a result orchardists kept growing the century old variety of fruits in their orchards that marked the inception of fruit industry. Efforts were poured in later to give impetus to fruit research in Himachal in the form of establishment of new fruit research centres and a horticulture university at Nauni in Solan.

A special department, namely fruit breeding centre, was also established in HorticultureUniversity to carry out research on new varieties of fruits. But the centre could not last long, as it failed to obtain fruitful results. The state government at last adopted the easy path of importing new varieties of fruits from foreign countries. This process is on for the last four to five years. Despite availability of ample amount of scientists and research facilities, research on new varieties of fruits has not been done. There are two reasons behind it. First one is that to obtain results, research work demands ample amount of time. And despite that there is no guarantee of success.

Second reason is the work where researcher gets the opportunity to work with latest scientific equipments is considered best in scientific community. Evaluation work of new fruits involves investigation of general features of quality of fruit like its colour, shape, taste etc. This is an important work. But in scientific perspective, these are considered ordinary works and hence does not command much respect in scientific community. Researchers therefore shies from carrying their research in this particular subject. The only solution to this problem is to establish a separate research centres for carrying out research on fruit breeding, new fruits and new varieties of already established fruits. I got opportunity to work in world’s two famous fruit breeding institutes and the experience I amassed was that there should be exclusive institutes for fruit breeding. Only then complete progress in this field is possible.

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