Accreditatin of of Spices Nurseries

The planting material requirement of the spices growers is mainly met by nurseries established under State Department of Horticulture/Agriculture, the State Agriculture Universities (SAUs), ICAR Institutes and nurseries in private sector.  The nurseries in public domain provide only 10-15 % of the demand for planting material.  The major part of the demand is met by the unregulated private nurseries, which lacks modern infrastructure such as green house, mist chamber, efficient nursery tools and gadget, implements and machinery. Establishment of a network of Spice Nursery to ensure the availability of good quality, disease free, certified planting material of desired high yielding varieties will have a tremendous impact on production, productivity and quality of the spices produced. Towards this direction, DASD has been authorized by Ministry for accrediting spice nurseries since 2016-17. Accreditation of Nurseries is an important step to ensure availability of quality planting material to the farmers. As per the MIDH norms, planting material need to be procured only from accredited nurseries for all government programmes.

Under the accreditation programme, DASD will grant graded recognition to nurseries based on their infrastructure, production system & quality parameters of planting material and management practices adopted. The accreditation work is carried out through a special committee formed for this purpose. The expenditures of this committee such as honorarium to the consultant transportation and accommodation expenses of the committee during the visit  are met by DASD and conforms to the norms adopted by NHB such as TA and DA for chief consultant, honorarium for the members, transportation charges and other expenditures. More than 70 spice nurseries were accredited by the Directorate till 2020-21. During 2021-22, DASD targets to accredit at least 25 Spices nurseries in the country.