success achieved at the National Research Centre on Citrus, Nagpur and PAU
Ludhiana/ Abohar in multiplication of disease-free citrus planting material. These
centers should be replicated in different citrus growing belts at institution devoted
to citrus R&D. a total of eight such centres are recommended. These centers
provide with large net-houses for raising healthy rootstock seedlings and
establishment of containment facilities for maintenance of virus-free scion variety
stock plants. These centers are allocated a sum of Rs 1.1 crore each.
ii. The major cost involved in the production of tissue-cultured plant is the
expenditure involved in hardening. To make the tissue-cultured plants available
at affordable rate, the need is felt to establish large hardening facilities for tissue
cultured plants in different horticultural crops located in different crop clusters. It is
proposed that six new large scale hardening structures be installed in different
regions having demand for nearly 15-20 million plantlets per annum of different
horticultural crops. These centres be provided with Rs. 50 lakhs each for
establishing semi-hardened tissue cultured plantlets and then supplying to the
farmers.
iii. It is also proposed to establish a National Centre for Plant Disease Diagnosis in
horticultural crops at IIHR, Bangalore with a grant of Rs. 200 crores to conduct
research on disease management in different horticultural crops and serve as a National Facility for the entire country to have provision for sharing
facilities on hire for any study. There will a network of ten centres for production
of Molecular Diagnostic kits for different diseases affecting horticultural crops.
These centres should be given Rs. 1.0 crore each for creating these facilities.
iv. To strengthen the facilities for Horticultural Biotechnology and ancillary facilities at
the different public sector undertaking, i.e. ICAR institutes and SAU’s, 50 centres
already involved in micro propagation should be strengthened with budget
allocation of Rs. 200 crores to make available world class facility. .
v. A provision for Up-scaling of micropropagation activities in target horticultural
crops at different centres in public and private sector is also recorded. The
existing centres may be given financial support to create facility for large scale
multiplication and hardening facilities.