HOD’s Desk
Greetings to all!
Fruits are one of the oldest forms of food known to human being. The most popular Tamil King Athiyaman offered a rare kind of Aonla fruit to Tamil Poetess Avvaiyar for her long life span 2000 years ago. This shows the significance of fruits in human life longevity. Fruits play an important role in agriculture and industrial economy. Fruits are an important supplement to the human diet as they provide the essential minerals, vitamins and fibre required for maintaining good health.Fruits are among the perishable commodities, are important ingredients of human diet.
India has witnessed voluminous increase in fruit production over the last few years. Significant progress is made in area expansion resulting in higher production. As per Third Advance Estimates of Database published by National Horticulture Board during 2018-19, India produced 98.579 million metric tonnes of fruits from an area of 6.648 million hectares and Tamil Nadu produced 5.767 million metric tonnes of fruits from the area of 0.294 million hectares. Tamil Nadu ranks seventh position in fruit production among the Indian States.
The development achieved in the fruit crops is indicative of the fact that there is growing demand for fruits. The nutritional intake from fruits is higher among urban population than that of rural population. Along with the urbanization, people are likely to increase their calorie intake at a higher pace through fruits.The past experience is rewarding for enhanced output from the investment. Availability of timely robust information in this sector will certainly improve the socio-economic conditions of public by providing self-reliance besides environmental protection.
In addition, there is a wide diversification in the production pattern globally. Improved production technologies viz., hybrids/ high yielding varieties, increased use of fertilizers and plant protection measures have brought a spectacular increase in the production of fruits. Fruit industry has emerged as an important sector for diversification of agriculture and has established its creditability in improving farm income through increased productivity, generating employment and in enhancing exports besides providing domestic nutritional security.
With this background, a team of scientists working in this department are concentrating on crop improvement and management, propagation and nursery management, high density planting and canopy management of fruit crops, under changing ecosystem. This department offers teaching to the students of B.Sc. (Hons.) Horticulture from 2011 and M.Sc. (Hort.) in Fruit science from 2022 onwards. Simultaneously the research is concentrated on tropical and arid zone fruit crops against salinity. To support the farming community, the genuine quality planting materials are also supplied at a reasonable cost.
Dr. R. Arulmozhiyan, Ph.D.
Professor & Head
Department of Fruit Science
Horticultural College and Research Institute for Women
Tiruchirappalli