Source: The Sangai Express
Imphal, December 08 2008:
Mulberry plants will be replanted in all the areas where the plants planted in the first phase of the Sericulture Project failed to grow or died immaturely.
During the first phase of the Project, mulberry plants were in all the districts of Manipur covering an area of 1700 hectares.
But in many areas, mulberry plants failed to grow or died before attaining maturity.
The decision to replant mulberry was adopted during an official meeting of the Sericulture Department held today in the mini-conference hall of the Secretariat.
The meeting presided by the Principal Secretary (Sericulture) decided to plant 27 lakhs and 30 thousand mulberry anew.
To take up the replantation work from December 15, the meeting discussed on distributing nursery plants through heads of districts at the earliest.
It also discussed the possibility of Sericulture Dept providing the required fertilizer and equipment.
The meeting then agreed to entrust the district sericulture federations to complete the replantation work as well as to execute the work to the target ahead of the arrival of a Japanese team which is expected to visit the State in January next year.
It also asked the heads of districts to identify the components required for rearing houses and to submit reports.
The meeting further deliberated on expeditious completion of the official process so that equipment to be installed at the Sangaipat complex can be imported without undue delay.
As per the guidelines of the Project, each FoU (Field Operating Unit) should have two hectares of land.
Out of these, 1.7 hectare should be set aside for planting mulberry while the remaining land of 0.3 hectare may be used for building rearing house.
FoUs have been directed to plant 17,000 mulberry plants in 1.7 hectares of land allotted to them, but during field verification conducted by Sericulture Department some FoUs were found planting only 5000 Mulberry plants in 1.7 hectares of land, informed a source.