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Saffron bloom in Kashmir raises hopes of good harvest
Saffron bloom in Kashmir has again raised the hopes of a good harvest for the second consecutive year; according to officials, this year’s harvest is going to break all previous records of production
Saffron bloom this autumn has again raised the hopes of a good harvest for the second consecutive year.
According to officials, this year’s harvest is going to break all previous records of production. From the past two weeks, in the early hours, villagers assemble at the fields of Pampore to pluck purple-coloured flowers and the harvest gives them the hope of a bumper crop. “If everything works, this year will break all previous records and the production will surpass previous years of the saffron production,” said director, agriculture, Iqbal Choudhary. “After the compilation of the figures, the production will be much above this year,” he said.
He said though the figures were compiled by the end of December, they get an idea by the harvest which had almost been completed.
Harvesting began in October-end and will continue till the middle of November. And from the past couple of weeks, the meadows of Pampore on both sides of the National Highway IA wore a festive look on sunny days with families thronging to their fields to collect saffron in wicker baskets.
“The almighty has been kind to us this season like last year. Though when there were predictions of snow in the last week of October, everyone got worried and were thinking that snow could prove disastrous at the peak harvest season. Fortunately, there was only rain, not snow,” said Manzoor Magray, a grower from Lethpora who has almost completed his harvest on an acre of land. “We almost completed our harvest. Now we will be drying the flowers for the final processing,” he said.
Another grower Asif Javeed said most of the saffron growers had already completed their harvest in Pulwama. Within the next few days, the plucking of flowers will be over.
Last year Kashmir’s saffron output crossed 13.36 tonnes, the most in a decade, thanks to the introduction of a scheme in 2010 to rejuvenate its cultivation and the launch of sprinkler irrigation. Saffron is reputed to be the world’s most expensive spice and is known as the king of condiments. It fetches between ₹1.5 lakh and ₹2.5 lakh per kg.
The national mission on saffron was launched in 2010 under which root rejuvenation of the crop and sprinkler irrigation were launched.
Officials claim that saffron yield in the area where the scheme was implemented had increased to 4.5 to 5 kg per hectare and Kashmir has the potential to produce 6 to 7 kg saffron per hectare. Earlier, in the 1980s, our production was over 6 kg per hectare.
Officials said saffron was grown across 3,700 hectares in Kashmir compared to 5,500 hectares in the late 1980s. The ₹410-crore national mission on saffron has been implemented on 3,500 hectares. Of this, 3,200 hectares is located in Pampore and the rest in Srinagar and Budgam.
The officials said the mission had helped bring more land under the saffron cultivation. Many growers had earlier started converting saffron fields into apple orchards and using them for commercial purposes because of their prime locations, mostly along the Srinagar-Jammu highway. With bumper production continuously, the growers will be again get motivated towards this golden crop. “We feel now if growers will work hard, the saffron will again be a good revenue source for us. For the last two years, the crop has been very good,” said another grower.
