By Our Staff Reporter
Dehradun, 3 Jan: State Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare Minister Ganesh Joshi held a review meeting with officials of the Agriculture and Horticulture Departments on Monday. At the meeting, Minister Joshi issued necessary directions regarding distribution of apple plants in the winter season by the Horticulture Department. Stressing on distribution of high quality planting material, Joshi said good plants are the soul of the farmers and apple orchards should be given improved apple cultivars with high yield and better quality. He instructed the officers to pay special attention to apples.
Joshi said that apple farmers should be given the same plants, including rootstock clonal variety or seedlings of different species of apples, which they desire. Apart from this, Minister Joshi also suggested removing GST on nurseries. Minister Joshi said that special attention should be paid to the quality of apple plants. He added that a meeting had summoned on Wednesday for which the farmers from across the state had been invited so that their suggestions and feedback could be obtained. Whatever suggestions would come from the farmers through this meeting would definitely be included. In the coming times, when the apple farmers would get to plant the variety of apple of their choice, this scheme would definitely prove to be a milestone. He claimed that continuous efforts are being made to double the income of the farmers.
Many departmental officers including Secretary, Agriculture, BVRC Purushottam, Additional Secretary Ranveer Singh Chauhan, Secretary Nitika Khandelwal, and Horticulture Director HS Baweja were present on the occasion.
