When commercialised, this cardamom crop with ICM is capable of giving severe competition to Gautemala, which is currently India's main competitor.

Three years of farm experiments conducted in Kerala by agronomists at Excel Industries has given the cardamom yield of 1,430 kg per hectare, substantially higher than the current national average of 130 kg per hectare, which is more than one third of Gautemala's 400 kg per hectare.

As regards turmeric, experiments in Nizamabad in Andhra Pradesh are said to yield around 40 kg per hectare against the current levels of around 20-25 kg per hectare.

A good cardamom crop -- say of 6.5 to 8 mm length -- without the ICMtechniques, can fetch Rs 620 per kg. The cardamom with ICM could fetch "a premium" of 20 per cent.

Despite manifold increase in yield, the agronomists claim that there has been no loss of quality as there is no genetic alteration or biotechnology involved in the experiments.

Till mid-70s, India was considered to be the leader in cardamom, whereafter Guatemala began taking the lead position. One of the main reason for this change is that India's crop depends mainly on rain fed regions and therefore, periodic seasonal crop, whereas Guatemala manages to grow cardamom round the year, aided with round the year rains thereby higher chances of photosynthesis that gives a higher yield and productivity.

India's cardamom production is almost stagnant at around 6,000-7,000 tonnes from over 85,000 hectars under cardamom cultivation. Gautemala, on the other hand, produces 10,000 tonnes and gives severe competition to India's cardamom.

The experiments were conducted at a model 7.7 acre farm in Kattappana in Idukkidistrict of Kerala. The results of integrated approach involving ideal soil management, water management, plant health management and pollination management helped increase the cardamom yield multifold.

As weather conditions are beyond the control of the scientists and agronomists, the improvement in cardamom production at the experimental farm was achieved mainly by "right soil and water management techniques, adopting crop protection methods, including drip irrigation and utilising adequate pollinators".

According to Excel Industries S Ganesan, chief manager (marketing): "One of the main reason for low productivity in most of the Indian crops is that the soil organic carbon content has gone down considerably, primarily because of unbalanced application of chemical nutrients. Against the preferred level of 1.5 per cent of the organic carbon content in the soil, it is currently placed at 0.3-0.5 per cent."

The ICM techniques that the company follows in its farms has impacted all yield components ofcardamom, such as number of tillers per clump, number of pinicles per tiller, number of flowers per panicle, number of capsules per panicle and number of seeds per capsule.

Says Ganesan, for long, our growers and research institutes have followed compartmentalised approach to cardamom. A holistic approach involving soil and crop is "awfully" lacking. "While the cultivation of high yielding varieties is desirable and necessary to improve productivity, it is one among several inputs and technologies required to raise the productivity".

Cardamom is a highly pollinated crop and requires honey bees for pollination. One of the important technique in the ICM for boosting cardamom production is to attract bees, which is done do by using a bee attractant supplied by USA's Custom Chemicals. The bee attractant helps high capsule set which is even qualitatively superior.