Agartala: Tripura has decided to start work in mission mode over the next five years to promote the growth of pineapples and jackfruits for facilitating their export to foreign countries after their “augmented” growth figures were still found behind expected numbers.

Tripura, which announced queen pineapple as the state fruit in 2018, has exported consignments of the fruit along with jackfruits, lemon, and others to countries in the Middle East and Europe, and many South-East Asian nations.

However, the fruits are not yet grown in sufficient quantities to satisfactorily popularise them in foreign destinations, the state government feels, owing to which the ambitious mission-mode project was decided to boost production figures.

“Tasty pineapple and jackfruits are grown in our state are exported outside our state and country. The growth figures of these fruits have increased from before but there is a huge scope to popularise them worldwide. In absence of a mechanism for direct surveillance and control of the government, our objective of providing our fruits worldwide and earning foreign currency through this trade will not be fulfilled. So, we have decided to commence the Pineapple and Jackfruit Mission under Department of Industries and Commerce till 2027,” Minister for Information and Cultural Affairs (ICA) Sushanta Chowdhury told reporters on Tuesday evening after a meeting of the state cabinet.

The mission, which would start from April 1 this year, would continue till 2027. The project was conceptualised to start with Rs. 153 crore, out of which Rs. 10 crores would be provided from the state budget. The rest of the proposed fund would be sourced through convergence from the North East Centre (NEC), Ministry for Development of North East Region (DonER), Tripura Rural Livelihood Mission (TRLM), Horticulture department funds, and corporate social responsibility funds of different public and private enterprises.

In July last year, the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) centre of Tripura designed a high-density weed resistant, climate-resilient pineapple cultivation technology to intensify pineapple cultivation in the state.

In the traditional cultivation practice, growers encounter a lot of weed and wild vegetation, moisture wastage, low growth, and a host of other problems. The new cultivation protocol was said to ensure total weed suppression, soil moisture conservator, prevention of soil moisture evaporation, even during heatwaves.

The new cultivation protocol claimed to ensure bigger pineapple growth up to 1.5 kg for the Kew variety and 1.2-1.4 kg for Tripura’s very own ‘queen pineapple’. While Tripura’s pineapple growers are complaining of lack of market, especially due to low fruit size, the ICAR-devised system ensured a higher density of pineapple plants with 43,000 plants per hectare against 25,000 plants that can be grown per hectare in the traditional method.

Tripura grows an estimated 1.28 lakh MT pineapples every year across 8,800-hectare orchards across districts. Some of these orchards are run by the government, but most of them are owned privately. Over 4,000 pineapple growers are directly connected to the cultivation of the fruit in the state.