GULBARGA: The Agriculture Department has fixed a target of cultivating 7.8 lakh hectares in the coming kharif season in Gulbarga district.

Sources in the department told The Hindu here on Tuesday that last year's target was 7.72 lakh hectares. They said this year's target was set in view of the exceptionally good kharif season in the past couple of years. The department hoped to exceed the target if the season began well with heavy and timely rain after the onset of monsoon, they added.

The kharif season in Gulbarga district is dominated by the cultivation of pulses, and this year the department has fixed a target of covering 4.47 lakh hectares of land as against last year's target of 4.42 lakh hectares. Last year, the target for cultivation of pulses in the kharif season was exceeded with a high coverage under the red gram crop.

Red gram is expected to continue to dominate the coming kharif season with a targeted coverage of three lakh hectares and an expected production of 2.27 lakh tonnes. Sources said that though red gram cultivation in the last kharif season had touched 3.3 lakh hectares, the department had decided to take up a campaign to dissuade farmers from going in for red gram crops this year due to the risks involved, particularly in rain-fed areas.

They said the department had decided to promote other crops, including cereals and oilseeds such as sunflower, to gradually replace red gram in rain-fed areas.

The department has decided to promote the cultivation of "mat bean" (mattigi) during the kharif season and fixed a moderate target of cultivating 1,000 hectares of land. The production target is 500 tonnes. The target for cultivation of cereals for the kharif season is 1.26 lakh hectares (the production target is 1.8 lakh tonnes). As a normal monsoon is expected, sowing operations are likely to begin in the second or third week of June or July first week after the first showers.

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