The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Nagapattinam News : Kuruvai cultivation area likely to come down this year

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jun 21, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Nagapattinam

Kuruvai cultivation area likely to come down this year

Staff Reporter

Only 60 per cent of the total area to be covered

NAGAPATTINAM: The short-term `kuruvai' paddy crop, considered to be the cash crop of the farmers of the Cauvery delta region, is likely to be cultivated only in about 60 per cent of the normal area in the Cauvery delta region of Nagapattinam district this year with the help of their pumpsets.

Farmers depending on surface water for irrigation in the remaining 40 per cent of the area are keeping their fingers crossed and could not raise the crop for want of Mettur water for irrigation.

Water level in the Mettur reservoir stood at 53.84 feet against the full tank level of 120 feet with a poor inflow of 584 cusecs on Monday evening. The storage in the reservoir was 19.47 tmc feet against the dam's full capacity of 93.4 tmc feet.

Irrigation officials told The Hindu that it would be ideal to release water from the Mettur reservoir after the level touched the 80 feet mark and pointed out that till such time water would not be released from the dam for delta irrigation.

I. Muthuvel, Joint Director (JD) of Agriculture, Nagapattinam, told on Monday that the kuruvai paddy crop could be covered only in about 20,000 hectares out of the normal area of 34,800 hectares with the help of pumpsets in Mayiladuturai, Sirkazhi, Kuthalam and Sembanarkovil areas in the district. The remaining 15,000 hectares of fallow lands will covered with the usual samba paddy area of 1.06 lakh hectares that will come for harvest in the middle of January next year.

Mr Muthuvel said that kuruvai paddy nurseries had already been raised in about 2,000 hectares with the help of about 14,000 pumpsets in Kuthalam, Mayiladuturai, Sirkazhi and Sembanarkovil blocks and pointed out that transplantation of the crop was completed in about 15,000 hectares so far. Most of the farmers have raised the short-duration (110 days) fine paddy varieties of ADT-43, ADT-36, IR-59 and coarse variety of TKM-9.

The JD said that farmers in several areas had prepared their lands taking advantage of the rains two months ago and had been advised to take up summer ploughing wherever possible for carrying out samba paddy cultivation.

The kuruvai paddy crop was raised in about 24,000 hectares in the district last year and samba crop was raised in about 1.30 lakh hectares. The heavy northeast monsoon rains in October and November and the subsequent tsunami on December 26 last had caused heavy damage to the paddy crop in the district, he said.

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Kuruvai cultivation area likely to come down this year