Ranchi, Aug 1 (IANS) Situated near the Jharkhand-Uttar Pradesh border, Garhwa village is in the spotlight over astounding success in graft farming of crops like tomatoes and brinjals. The force behind this catalytic change is a school headmaster turned farmer, Hridaynath Chaubey.

Hridaynath Chaubey, a retired headmaster, brought graft farming into practice and is cultivating grafted tomatoes and brinjals in a modern way in Banshidhar Nagar block of the district. His farming has yielded good results, and today he is being followed by farmers from all over Jharkhand.

Hridaynath Chaubey took to farming after retirement and wanted to innovate new ways to mitigate the woes of farmers, saddled with some income from traditional farming of crops like paddy, wheat and maize.

Seeing an example in his efforts, the farmers are now moving towards modern methods of farming using new techniques.

Initially, Hridaynath Chaubey ordered grafted plants from Chhattisgarh’s Ambikapur at the rate of Rs 10 per plant.

According to him, the grafted plants give twice the production of normal plants and are also tolerant to diseases, which in turn gives more profit to the farmers.

The most special thing about this plant is that it can be planted in any season. If it is planted in the off-season, farmers get good rates for it, which results in more profits.

He further told IANS that by producing paddy and wheat, a farmer cannot save more than Rs 30,000 per acre, whereas by cultivating vegetable crops using modern methods, a farmer can earn up to Rs 2-3 lakh per acre.

Sharing his experience, he said that about Rs two to three lakh were spent in planting grafted tomatoes and brinjals, on one and a half acres of land.

Shiv Shankar Prasad, District Agriculture Officer, said that this technique is quite popular in Chhattisgarh and has yielded significant returns on the cultivation of tomatoes, brinjals, chillies and capsicum.

“Grafted brinjals and tomatoes are grafted on wild brinjals. Since the root is of wild brinjal, the grafted plants do not suffer from root-related diseases, and the growth of the plant is also much stronger than that of a normal plant. At the same time, the production is also doubled, and the grafted plant is also able to withstand any type of weather,” he explained.

–IANS

mr/dan