Elarajan – Cardamom Variety

Name : K.J Baby Puliyanmalak-j-baby

District & State :  Idukki, Kerala

Category : Agricultural (General)

Award :   National

Award Function :   4th National Grassroots Innovation Awards

Award Year : 2007

Innovation Description

  • Award Status
  • IPR Status
  • Technical Specification
  • Salient Features
  • MVIF
  • Vard

Background

K.J. Baby has developed a white flowered variety of cardamom, which has higher yield, oil content and recovery card-3ratio than the locally popular varieties.Baby is the native of Ettumanoor and presently resides at Puliyanmala. It was here where he was born in a farming family along with three brothers and two sisters. As a child, he was always interested in sports and had a special liking for football. Later when he was sixteen years old, his interest switched over to stitching, as he wanted to develop this skill. He continued this till getting married at the age of 24 years and then he took up agriculture as a profession.Baby, who studied up to class eighth, is 66 years now. His family consists of his wife, three sons and a daughter. Two younger sons (36 and 34 years) assist him in agriculture while the elder son (39 years) is a cardamom state manager elsewhere; daughter (41 years) is married.Puliyanmala is a small town, having around 60 per cent Tamil and 40 per cent Malyalee population chiefly comprising of agricultural labourers. The agricultural crops cultivated by the farmers in the region are cardamom, pepper, coconut and on a very limited area, arecanut, banana and lemon are cultivated.In 1965, when their land in Ettumanoor was bought by the government for establishing industrial estate, Baby?s family shifted to Puliyanmala and bought a cardamom estate of around 5 acres. At that time, the climate at Puliyanmala was colder and hostile so cultivation of pepper in this region was not feasible and so the family opted for the cultivation of a local variety of cardamom. It was in late 1970?s that the climate began to change to be a bit warmer so along with cardamom they started coffee and pepper cultivation.In 1982, he added 2.5 acres of land to his total holding through purchase and started growing cardamom. Somewhere around same time the prices of cardamom started to rise hence to maximize his profits, he also started making selection of cardamom so as to develop selections/ varieties that would yield higher. Their family is a joint family and the total land holding now is close to 20 acres. All of their land is under cardamom cultivation, white flower variety covers eight acres, while remaining area is under high yielding Njallani, which covers six acres while another new variety, which he claims to have developed recently covers remaining six acres.

http://nif.org.in/innovation/White_Flowered_Cardamom_Variety/327

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