The area under horticulture crops in Haryana has reached to about 5.62% of the total cropped area of the state. While stating this here on Thursday, agriculture and horticulture minister, Paramvir Singh said the efforts of the state government to encourage the farmers for diversification of crops had shown encouraging results.
During the year 2009-10, the area under vegetable cultivation touched to 3,00,360 hectares. Apart from this, farmers were also taking keen interest in replacing their traditional crops by other commercial horticulture crops, such as- flowers and spices?. He said during the current financial year upto May 2010, fruit production of over 10,820 metric tonnes had been achieved by bringing 28 hectares of additional area under fruit cultivation and total area had increased to 41,478 hectares.
Over 6.19 lakh metric tonnes of vegetables were produced by bringing over 13,950 hectares of area under vegetable cultivation.
Similarly, 39,870 metric tonnes of spices had been produced from an area of 935 hectares. Medicinal plants and flowers were grown over an area of 442 hectares and 137 hectares, respectively during the period under report, he added.