POINGUINNIM: Canacona taluka has a lot of scope for agriculture and agriculture-related activities since times memorial. Among the many agricultural products grown, a mention needs to be made for jackfruit cultivation.
If the jackfruit trees are surveyed in different villages of the taluka, only then its value is realised, but often it has been wasted as cattle-fodder. Under household production scheme the government provides a subsidy of up to 70 per cent. No doubt, there are takers for this scheme, but the agriculture department of Canacona expects more farmers to avail of the benefit of the existing scheme.
The department provides subsidy for the purchase of jackfruit peeler, cashew apple juice-extractor, kokum peeler, avla peeler, areca-nut peeler, masala huller, cashew nut processing unit, fruit-pulp extractor, dehydration unit and others. All these are but so very useful and are commercially-oriented, but we find a few takers for this scheme.
It has been widely seen and found that these units are widely used among the ST community, while its use among the other sections of the community is very little. In the villages, a lot of jackfruit trees are seen producing plenty of fruits but it is a pity to see that the production has no market for its disposal.
People in Maharashtra and Karnataka use it (the fruit) elaborately, feels ZAO Canacona, Mr Rajesh Desai and hence he advises the farmers to take the benefit of KRC and other transportation to transport the available fruits over so that it has a market value.
Of late, a progressive farmer from Tirvon, Poinguinnim, Mr Kamat, a science graduate, after trying rubber plantation, Cocoa, Spices farm, now has come out with the model machine to process the jackfruit, called Jackfruit Peeler.
After seeing the waste of jackfruits in his own plantation, he purchased this machine from Sagar Engineering, Kudal and has been processing the same from this season. Speaking to ‘The Navhind Times’, Mr Kamat says that the machine is useful to some extent, but if it had a motor it would have been more useful, as presently it is manually operated.
Jackfruits processed by this machine, which are later boiled in oil, has a good flavour. If the ripe jackfruits are boiled in coconut oil, the flavour is still of quilt nature. The machine costs about 5,600/- and it is manually operated. Mr Kamat feels that if one is having a lot of jackfruits and people to operate it, this can be beneficial as one kg of boiled fruits cost about Rs 200.
