Practical Nursery Production

Fruit culture is a long term venture. Fruit trees have a very long juvenile phase and their bearing life is also long. Therefore, all aspects of its management must be thoroughly understood before initiating this. The nursery plants are the foundation of an orchard. Fruit plants of known pedigree and good quality are essential to boost production of superior quality fruits. On the other hand, poor planting material fail to respond to the intensive orcharding and become permanent liability on fruit growers. Nurseries play an important role in the progress of the horticulture through multiplication and supply of genuine planting material to the fruit growers.

It is. a sorry state of affairs that in our country, inspite of fruit culture as an occupation, not much attention has been paid to nursery production. Since ancient times, we do not have sufficient number of nurseries which could cater with the growing demand of quality planting material. The situation is worse when we talk of forest plant nurseries. Therefore, for faster development of horticulture and forestry in the country, production of reliable, true to type, vigorous and insect-pest, diseases and virus free plant material is the need of the hour. This is possible only if we have large number of reliable and genuine nurseries.

Nursery raising is highly remunerative commercial venture. The problem of unemployment in the country to some extent can be tackled by adoption of nursery raising as an occupation. Such persons need a comprehensive training on this subject. The literature available on practical nursery production is scanty and scattered here and there. In this book, the authors have made an attempt to bring all aspects related to nursery production at a single place, in a systematic manner and in a layman's language.