Growing Exotic Vegetables in Goa: A Workshop

Dr. Rajnarayan discussing importance of growing vegetables

The Club, in conjunction with TERI, organised a half-day workshop on Growing Exotic Vegetables in Goa, on the 14th of Sept. Faculty from Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK) spoke on the different kinds of non-traditional vegetables that have been successfully grown in Goa and how these can be grown safely, without the use of chemicals.

Dr. Rajnarayan, Program Coordinator at KVK spoke about the nutritional, medicinal and economic importance of growing vegetables.

He focused specially on 4 vegetables, broccoli, chinese cabbage, sweet corn and green capsicum, that he suggested the Club could consider growing on an experimental basis for the coming rabi season.

Chinese Cabbage, Broccoli, Green Capsicum and Sweet Corn have successfully been grown in Goa

This was followed by Dr. Prabhudesai touching on the importance of growing food “safely”. He explained how chemicals used to grow food end up in our body systems and can even be found in cows and mothers’ milk!! He said it was possible to make bio-inputs using EM, Neem and other natural ingredients so as to reduce farmers dependency on chemicals like urea and pesticides.

Five farmers have volunteered a portion of their fields to grow the 4 crops shown above. As part of this exercise KVK will guide the farmers in raising nurseries for these vegetables, land preparation and transplantation, making bio-inputs and timly harvesting. They will also guide farmers to gather data for scientific purposes.