Dir Horticulture visits Baramulla, exhorts upon CA stores to provide best service to orchardists

Director Horticulture Kashmir Aijaz Ahmad Bhat on Friday termed Kashmir a bowl of fruit production and CA stores to provide the best services to orchardists during the forthcoming season.
According to reports Director Horticulture while visiting north Kashmir’s Baramulla district, accompanied by Chief Horticulture Officer Baramulla and other subordinate ranks of the department, exhorted upon CA store owners to ensure the best possible services to orchardists in coming season.
While interacting with officers and orchardists, he said Kashmir has been a bowl of fruit production that enjoys almost the monopoly of the production of different varieties of apple. He said the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir contributes a major portion in total production of apples in the country enabling it to rank 5th apple producing country in the world.
“Abundant production must be followed by efficient marketing & better returns to the grower which can only be possible by regulated supply of produce in the market which can happen by storing the apple produce in CA Stores”, Director Horticulture said.
He said in Kashmir valley, entrepreneurs have lately established the sufficient number of CA stores having a capacity of around 1.17 Lac Mtrs which is likely to reach 1.70 Lac by end of this year however as per estimates around 4 lac MTs capacity is required. He also said in order to strengthen the grid of CA stores in the valley the department is exploring every possible opportunity to have the infrastructure of CA stores developed abundantly in Kashmir and the best services are provided by the CA stores to orchardists.
During the visit, Director Horticulture inspected the working of two CA stores namely M/s Nundresh and M/s HN Agri Cold Chain having a capacity of 2000 MTs and 5000 MTs respectively during which the former was recently been sanctioned in the EMC of MIDH GoI and the later two years back under the scheme MIDH.