<p></p><p>Cashew cultivation and production in the State is witnessing an upsurge. After lying stagnant for the past several years, cashew cultivation is now being taken up in 1,48,000 hectares of land with an annual production pegged at 93,000 tons. The maximum production has been reported from Dhenkanal, Koraput and Nabarangpur districts. At present, Odisha is the third largest cashew-producing State after Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. Sources said the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) and a special collaboration scheme of the National Horticulture Mission (NHM) and the Directorate of Cashewnut & Cocoa Development (DCCD) are proving to be effective vehicles in boosting cashew production in the State.</p> <p>These apart, the Agriculture Department is implementing cashew cultivation through a convergence programme of Odisha Tribal Employment and Livelihood Programme (OTELP) and NHM.As per official figures, this year, while cashew is cultivated in 3,600 ha under the DCCD and NHM schemes, the crop is cultivated in 5,000 ha under the Directorate of Soil Conservation and in another 6,000 ha under MGNREGS. Sources said the Agriculture Department has decided to boost the area under cashew cultivation to around 20,720 ha in the next five years under MGNREGS. </p><p>At present, around 30,000 hectares for cashew cultivation is controlled by Odisha State Cashew Development Corporation Limited (OSCDCL), over 19,000 ha are under the Odisha Forest Development Corporation and around 75,000 ha are privately managed. “ To further boost the production, the Agriculture Department has started supplying high quality grafts of improved cashew varieties to farmers who till date were mostly dependent on seedling cultivation of unknown varieties,” said Nodal Horticulture Officer, MGNREGS, Sushant Das.He said this year grafts of improved cashew varieties such as VRI-2, VRI-4 and H-1608, which are ideally suited for the coastal regions, have been provided to farmers. While local trees raised from seeds gave a poor return of less than 2 kg nuts per tree a year from the seventh or eighth year of planting, the grafts of improved varieties will yield on an average 8 to 10 kg nuts per tree a year from the fifth year onwards, according to Das.“The State currently has around 33 lakh grafts of which 28 lakh will be used for plantation and the rest will be supplied to other States,” Das added. Director of the Horticulture Department, Sanjeev Chadha, said plans are afoot for replanting and rejuvenating old and senile cashew plants that have less productivity. Almost all cashew plantations in the State were taken up in the 70s. </p><p> </p><br><p></p>