The Directorate of Cashew Research (DCR) under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), Puttur in Dakshina Kannada has released a new Jumbo Nut Hybrid Cashew – Nethra Jumbo-1.
Directorate’s Principal Scientist J. According to Dinkara Adiga, about 90 cashews of this variety make one kg. In other varieties about 160 nuts are needed to make one kilo. This cuts the amount of labor required to harvest the crop by almost half.
If the other variety requires about 60 workers, it requires about 30–35 workers, reducing the man-days required to harvest it by about 50%.
“The new variety can save around ₹16,000 per tonne on labor cost and fetch a premium of ₹10,000 per tonne of nut yield. This gives farmers an additional revenue of Rs 26,000 on each tonne of walnut produced, making cashew cultivation a profitable venture under rainfed horticulture,” he said in a release.
“The process of harvesting through fallen nuts accounts for about 40% of the expenditure in cashew cultivation,” he said.
Walnut size is another advantage of this variety. “Netra Jumbo-1 produces 12 grams of walnuts with a high kernel recovery of 29% and the kernel comes under the larger grade (W130) than the highest export grade (W180) currently available,” he said. Most other released cashew varieties are medium (7 g) to small nut (about 5–6 g) types, with a few bold nut types weighing around 8–9 g.
He said that the development of jumbo nut varieties would reduce the manpower requirement for harvesting the nuts, as well as fetch premium price from the processor as it would produce premium size kernels with higher market value.
Large nuts also improve the processing efficiency in the factory as it will save labor in processing apart from achieving higher output.
Since the Nethra Jumbo-1 has a larger nut size, processors can pay around ₹10 more per kg. With this, a tonne helps a farmer to get around ₹10,000, Mr. Adiga said.
Also, Nethra Jumbo-1 is the bear at the start of the season. Farmers will get good price for the varieties coming early in the season. Farmers can bring this variety to the market by January. Other varieties hit the market by March-May.
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