Suhail Rather
Bandipora, March 3: Few years before, Orchard nursery in Bandipora was turning barren, today the nursery caters to the fruit sapling demand of the area.
Tahira-un-Nisa, a horticulture graduate from Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences led from the front to accomplish her "Mission Green" from the past three years.
For Nisa it was more of a mix of challenge, dedication and passion to revive the nursery which was increasingly turning barren dotted with dried trees. “No new tree grew in this nursery until the last few years,” the local orchardists hail her efforts.
Within three years the young horticulturalist has not only revived the old fruit trees but has also successfully developed a nursery of various fruit trees and piled up root stocks for the orchardists of the district.
Tahira-un-Nisa says the major challenge in the Horticulture sector is rejuvenation of old orchards and ensuring availability of quality plant material for the orchardists. She said her first priority was to rejuvenate the existing orchard and then replace the old orchards by High Density Plants under different schemes.
With the help of a team of workers working in the nursery at Bagh Bandipora, the department has developed High Density varieties of Walnut, Pomegranate, Apricot, Grapes, Fig, Apple, Pear and other fruit trees.
She said the Horticulture sector plays an important role in the district and contributes significantly to the Economy besides contributing immensely to strengthen the financial condition, poverty alleviation and employment generation.
` The young horticulturist said at the nursery their aim is to keep a bank of roots of various fruit plants for the private orchardists so that they don’t face any problem in procurement.
“She (Tahira) went to various private orchards in the town in search of different fruit trees and collected stocks from there and developed them at nursery and prepared a huge bank of root stocks of various fruit plants,” said Mohammad Gowhar, a local orchardist.
“We tried to grow Kiwi fruit in our High Tech Green House but during the lockdown last year, we failed to take care of those plants,” she said adding that this year they plan to grow Kiwi again so that orchardists can be provided this fruit.
During Lockdown when most of the government employees were staying at home, she requested for special movement passes several times just to take care of the nursery and water the root stocks. However few breaks spoiled the Kiwi roots.
With the revival of the horticulture nursery the directorate has sanctioned a project of One-Hectare High Density Apple Orchard and work has been started on the project this year. Tahira hopes that the new HD Apple orchard will give a flip to the horticulture sector in the district.
