Growing Exotic Vegetables in Goa: A Workshop

Dr. Rajnarayan discussing importance of growing vegetables

The Club, in conjunction with TERI, organised a half-day workshop on Growing Exotic Vegetables in Goa, on the 14th of Sept. Faculty from Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK) spoke on the different kinds of non-traditional vegetables that have been successfully grown in Goa and how these can be grown safely, without the use of chemicals.

Dr. Rajnarayan, Program Coordinator at KVK spoke about the nutritional, medicinal and economic importance of growing vegetables.

He focused specially on 4 vegetables, broccoli, chinese cabbage, sweet corn and green capsicum, that he suggested the Club could consider growing on an experimental basis for the coming rabi season.

Chinese Cabbage, Broccoli, Green Capsicum and Sweet Corn have successfully been grown in Goa

This was followed by Dr. Prabhudesai touching on the importance of growing food “safely”. He explained how chemicals used to grow food end up in our body systems and can even be found in cows and mothers’ milk!! He said it was possible to make bio-inputs using EM, Neem and other natural ingredients so as to reduce farmers dependency on chemicals like urea and pesticides.

Five farmers have volunteered a portion of their fields to grow the 4 crops shown above. As part of this exercise KVK will guide the farmers in raising nurseries for these vegetables, land preparation and transplantation, making bio-inputs and timly harvesting. They will also guide farmers to gather data for scientific purposes.

49 day old paddy

The picture below shows the paddy that was transplanted on the 20th of July using the Mechanical Paddy Transplanter.

Paddy, 49 days after mechanical transplantation

It’s been 49 days since transplantation and the paddy is doing well. In the picture on the right, the curved outline of the path taken by the paddy transplanter is visible.

Experiments in the Field

The Farmers Club is conducting various experiments both in growing and in marketing of their produce.

One of the more recent experiments has been the growing of some exotic vegetables, with support from the ICAR.

A few of the women have planted broccoli and capsicum. While the capsicum has not been doing very well, the broccoli has grown into healthy florets.

Broccoli being grown on an experimental basis