Orchard Management (1+1)

COURSE OVERVIEW

Cultivation of fruits, nuts and plantation crops is a long-term investment and needs lot of planning and expertise. While planning and planting a new orchard, one should give utmost attention and care to various aspects like selection of location and site, nature of soil and subsoil, planning of suitable kinds and varieties of fruits, proper planting distance and purchasing of plants from reliable nurseries. However, just acquiring the most suitable land for a particular crop and its planting does not ensure profitable production. Proper tree care is one of the most important aspects of orchard management. Commercial orchards should always be managed judiciously throughout their life to maintain optimum growth and production of high quality fruits on sustainable basis.
Orchard management includes preparation of tree basins and fertilization either through soil or foliage to meet the nutrients requirements of crops. It also includes training and pruning, irrigation and soil moisture conservation, weed control, land or water resource constraint management. Orchard floor management practices like clean cultivation, growing of cover crops, mulching, sod culture, chemical weed control etc. can greatly affect soil moisture conservation, maintenance of organic matter contents, soil erosion and controlling weeds, which ultimately influence fruit yield and quality. Inter cropping, mixed cropping, relay cropping and multi-storied cropping are useful to augment farm income. Development of crop models to get maximum possible yields of high quality produce is another way to manage the crop at farm level. Crop regulation in certain fruits is one of the important management practices to obtain desirable objectives. It is the basis for a regular and quality crop, which can be achieved through manual thinning, chemical thinning, selective harvesting, training, summer and winter pruning.
Orchard management also includes disease and pest management and plan to combat natural disasters like wind, hail or freeze. This course on orchard management covers all the steps needed for successful fruit cultivation.