The Directorate of Cashew Research (DCR), under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), Puttur in Dakshina Kannada, has released a new jumbo nut hybrid cashew — Nethra Jumbo-1. According to Principal Scientist of the directorate J. Dinakara Adiga, about 90 cashew nuts of this variety made a kg. In other varieties, about 160 nuts are required to make a kg. This brings down the amount of labour required for harvesting the crop by almost a half. If other varieties required about 60 workers, it requires around 30-35 workers bringing down the mandays required for its harvesting by almost 50%. “The new variety can save about ₹16,000 a tonne on labour cost and fetch a premium of ₹10,000 for bigger size per tonne of nut yield. This gives an additional revenue of ₹26,000 for farmers on every tonne of nut yield making cashew cultivation a profitable venture under rain-fed horticulture,” he said in a release. “The process of harvesting through picking of fallen nuts accounts to major share of expenditure to the tune of nearly 40% in cashew cultivation,” he said. Nut size is another advantage of this variety. “Nethra Jumbo-1 produces 12 gram nut with a high kernel recovery of 29% and the kernels fall under grade larger (W130) than presently available highest export grade (W180),” he said. Most of the other released cashew varieties are of medium (7 gram) to small nut (around 5-6 gram) type with a few exception of bold nut types weighing around 8-9 gram. He said that the development of jumbo nut varieties will significantly reduce the manpower requirement for harvesting of nuts apart from fetching premium price from processors as it will lead to production of premium sized kernels with higher market price. The bigger nuts also improve processing efficiency in the factory as it will also save labour in processing apart from getting higher out-turn. Since the Nethra Jumbo-1 has bigger nut size, processors can pay around ₹10 more per kg. With this, one tonne helps a farmer get nearly ₹10,000, Mr. Adiga said. Apart from this, Nethra Jumbo-1 bears early in the season. Farmers will get good rate for the varieties that come early in the season. Farmers can bring this variety to market by January. The other varieties come to the market by March-May, he said.