April 26, 2024

Justice for Gemmel

Stellar business, nonpareil

Rubber Board to conduct census on natural rubber plantations, prepare database

The Rubber Board ideas to perform a census on all-natural rubber plantations in the nation in a phased manner that will help it get ready a database for rubber.

KN Raghavan, Government Director, Rubber Board, stated that the census aims to confirm the true space under rubber, the age profile of rubber trees, discarded space, stage of adoption of new clones and the affect of enhanced clones in generation and productiveness and many others. Era of database and periodical updating is crucial for the formulation of in-depth mission method schemes for improving NR generation in the nation as nicely, he stated.

A pilot census do the job is scheduled to be performed in the Kottayam and Kannur districts of Kerala and Tripura. The census in the relaxation of the districts in Kerala and other rubber-expanding States would be concluded in the subsequent phases, he informed BusinessLine.

The Indian rubber plantation sector, he stated, is dominated by smallholders and accounts for ninety two per cent of the generation and ninety one per cent of the planted space in the nation. The sector has 1.32 million compact rubber growers, and their planted space comes close to 8.two lakh hectares.

The Board ideas to perform the database technology of rubber holdings with the help of extension officers and the lively participation of Rubber Producers’ Societies.

Portion 10 of the Rubber Act 1947 stipulates that registration of rubber plantations was required and the Board was equipped to manage an elaborate database. After the discontinuation of required registration under the Rubber Act, the Board resorted to structured statistical random sampling for the assortment of data on generation, productiveness, mature and immature locations, clones planted and other variables. The accuracy of the data gathered by random sampling has been challenged by farmers and shoppers.

The rubber census focuses on the assortment of aspects of rubber space which include complete planted space, immature space, mature space, tapping space, the range of trees, calendar year of planting, clones, tapping technique and the rain guarding status of the holdings. The census also collects the aspects of the tappers and the crop processing approaches, he stated.

A person of the major challenges the Board now faces is the decline in replanting and new planting. The scenario arose primarily due to the fact of rate tumble. The complete new planting in 2015-16 was about 16,000 hectares, which is minimized to close to one thousand hectares in 2020-21. When the replanting is minimized individuals tends to keep on tapping the senile trees and the generate will come to be minimized. This will affect the complete generation, he added.