Early Times Report
Samba, Sept 24: A one day skill development program on Value Addition of fruits and vegetables was organised at Apni Mandi Tapyal. The camp was organized by AGMO Samba Department of Horticulture Planning & Marketing in collaboration with District Canning Centre Jammu.
A number of farmers / growers, household ladies and unemployed youth from Tapyal, Gaghwal, Rajpura, Nonath & adjoining areas attended the live demonstration cum training programme.
Arvind Panjgotra Assistant Director Marketing, Anuj Verma AGMO Samba, Dr. Neerja SMS KVK Samba, Priya Laxmi CDPO Ghagwal, Dheeraj Sharma HDO Gaghwal, Avinash Singh Jasrotia Chairman Advisory Committee Apni Mandi Tapyal, Jia Lal, Anju Devi President, Bharat Bushan Secretary & Karan Singh Treasurer Local Management Committee Apni Mandi Tapyal, Vijay Tagotra Sarpanch Nonath, Surender Devi, Kuldeep Sharma, Mohan Lal, Yash Paul, Sehdev Singh, Yog Raj, other members of Local Management and Advisory Committee Apni Mandi Tapyal were present on the occasion.
Addressing farmers and females present on the occasion, Anuj Verma AGMO Samba said that the agriculturists of J&K need to be fully empowered, so as to minimize their exploitation in hands of middleman. Apart from growing demand driven & protected crop, the agriculturists of Samba district need to adopt proper Post Harvesting Techniques like conditioning, sorting, grading, packing and branding of their produce. In J&K, we have 30% post harvest losses in case of fruits and vegetables, which occur at various stages. Same can be reduced upto a minimal level, if the agriculturists, especially their household ladies, adopt to value addition techniques viz; processing of Fruits & Vegetables. Samba district has good potential for value addition of fruits like mangoes, lemon, strawberry, anola, gauva and winter vegetables like tomato, knoll khol, carrot, raddish, cauliflower, garlic, ginger etc.
AD Marketing Arvind Panjgotra appreciated efforts put in by AGMO Samba and the Local Management Committee of farmers for providing a free of cost facility to the local farmers at Apni Mandi Tapyal for sale of their produce without any commission.
Dr. Neerja SMS KVK Samba suggested upon value addition of seasonal fruits and vegetables by processing them. After processing we can enhance life of fruits and vegetables and enjoy them throughout the year. Besides this we can also enhance income of farmers and farm women. Dr Neerja also threw light on technical aspects of food processing. |
