Goa

Goa
 

Agriculture is one of the important economic activities in Goa. The region endowed with wide range of land forms, water bodies and climate has potential for cereals and plantation crops, fruits, vegetables, flowers, dairying, poultry, piggery, rabbitry and fishery. The soils are red latertic in hilly part and alluvial along the coast. Rice is the principal crop of the state. Suggested interventions for natural resource management for agriculture in the state are as follows:

� Cultivation of rice hybrid in coastal saline, of short duration rice Annada in rainfed uplands 

   and groundnut and cowpea in rice fallows

� Bioengineering measures for soil and water conservation involving cashew and mango.

Rice

The state has about 52,000 ha under rice, which is mostly rainfed. State average productivity is about 2.8 tonnes/ha. The major constraints in production are coastal salinity and acute shortage of labour during peak operation periods. The necessary interventions are:

� Cultivation of rice hybrids like KRH 2 and Sahyadri to increase productivity

� Cultivation of saline tolerant varieties such as CSR10, CSR13, CSR27

� Mechanization of farm operations

Coconut

Coconut is cultivated in 25,100 ha with a production of 4,868 nuts/ha/year. Presence of a large number of senile palms, frequent occurrence of drought, non adoption of nutrient management and incidence of basal stem-rot disease are the main causes for low yield. The technologies that can be adopted to improve productivity are:

� Replacing old and senile plantation with improved hybrids like Laccadive ordinary, 

  COD � WCT, WCT � COD and CGD � WCT

� Adoption of high density multispecies cropping systems with banana, ginger, pineapple and vegetables

� Adopting soil and water conservation measures and fertigation

� Converting coconut waste into vermicompost

Cashew

Cashew is cultivated in 50,000 ha with a production of 27,000 tonnes. Its productivity is 690 kg/ha. The reasons for low productivity are existence of senile seedling plantations and low input usage. The technologies that can be adopted to improve productivity are as follows:

       � Replanting senile plantations with high yielding varieties like Goa 1, Bhaskara, Vengurla 1, Vengurla 6 and

        Vengurla 7