M F AHMED
Daltonganj, Oct 30: Taiwan papaya is making business in the backyard of Jharkhand Mahuadanr block in Latehar district. A young innovative farmer, Ujjwal Lakra, who has just finished his intermediate in commerce studies from Marwari college Ranchi, is cultivating Red Lady 786 Taiwan variety papaya in one acre of his land at Behera Toli, about 5 kilometers away from the local Mahuadanr police station and about 115 kilometers away from Daltonganj.
Ujjwal said that he bought the papaya plants at the rate of 60 rupees per plant from a nursery owner in Ranchi who gets it from nurseries located in West Bengal.
One acre of land can have more than 550 papaya plants and Ujjwal has planted 580 of them in his land where earlier he was planning to build a house for himself.
Farming is now his first love, Ujjwal reiterated. According to him, he owes his success to his brother-in-law Arpan Tigga. Tigga works in the agricultural office in Latehar district and motivated Ujjwal to go for papaya farming.
A fruit cultivator Manish Nagesia, who belongs to a vulnerable primitive tribe, also gave Ujjwal some useful tips on how to cultivate papaya.
He explained that because this was his first foray into growing, and especially of the all-season fruit papaya, he researched every feature of the papaya on the internet before settling on the Red Lady 786 Taiwan type.
Although the Red Lady 786 Taiwan papaya plant is modest in size, it produces a large number of papaya fruits. His papaya has a good market in Sisai, Gumla district, some 130 kilometres from Mahuadanr.
He sold about 15 quintals of raw papaya in Sisai market at a rate of 10 rupees per Kg. On being asked as to why he couldn’t get a market for papaya in his home block Mahuadanr, he said that Mahuadanr market is not as big as Sisai and here people don’t want to spend any more farthings on fruit like papaya.
Sources said that Mahuadanr block is slowly developing into a fruit hub as pears are grown in Netarhat which is quite a big favourite with the tourists who visit here.
