Sooty blotch is one of the recent problems in mangoes which causes their blackening resulting financial losses to the mango growers
Bhubaneswar: There is good news for mango growers of the state who are facing the seemingly unsolvable problem of quality mango production due to the changing climatic condition.
‘Sooty blotch’ is one of the recent problems in mangoes which causes their blackening and those affected fruits are downgraded from valuable fresh market grades to much cheaper rate which causes financial losses to the mango grower.
Working on this emerging disease of mangoes in our state for the last four years, scientists at ICAR-IIHR-Central Horticultural Experiment station in Bhubaneswar have developed specific pre and post harvest management practices.
To disseminate the technologies to farmers, IIHR-CHES organised a field day on ‘Sooty blotch disease of Mango: Pre and post harvest management’ at farmer’s field of Angul June 23. There scientists explained to the mango growers about schedule of practices to be taken under field condition to avoid the blackening of mangoes as well as demonstrated the ‘Arka mango wash technology’ to clean the fungal blackening of mangoes.
Thirty progressive local mango growers of Angul district actively participated in the field day and expressed their happiness about the effort of CHES in reaching the farmers of Angul for quality mango production.
With support of head of the institute Gobinda Ch Acharya, the field day was organised by G Sangeetha, principal scientist of CHES. Bineeta Satpathy, senior scientist and head, Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK), Angul, Shriram Ratan Pradhan SMS (Horticulture), Ipsita Mishra scientist (Pl. Protection) of KVK, Padma Lochan Das, DDH, Angul, facilitated the programme at Angul and interacted with mango growers about the need to take up the new technologies to increase their income.
Caption
The programme in progress