Madikeri: Kodagu, Chikmagalur and Udupi districts, which were earlier chosen as "horticulture districts" under the National Horticulture Mission (NHM), have been removed from the list to accommodate certain other districts.

According to information gathered by The Hindu here, the districts that have now been included in the list are Gulbarga, Bidar and Hassan.

Horticulture Minister R. Srinivas, who is the Minister in charge of Kodagu, recently announced that 13 districts in the State had been selected for developing specific horticultural crops.

Help for exports

The NHM seeks to give a thrust to organic farming, with help for marketing and exporting the produce.

The mission was announced by Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram. It is to be implemented throughout the country at a cost of Rs. 17,000 crores. Funds were to be routed through cooperative societies formed for the implementation of the mission.

Farmers in Kodagu will now lose the opportunity to get subsidies for various schemes under the mission and develop alternative crops, sources said.

Pineapple was the crop picked for Kodagu under the NHM. It would have served as raw material for the Orange Growers' Cooperative Society's juice extraction unit at Gonicoppa. It would have helped supplement the mandarin orange crop, which has almost disappeared due to trees becoming diseased in recent years.

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