India has witnessed green revolution, white revolution, yellow revolution, and blue revolution. And now a production revolution in small holder farming is at dawn through vegetable cultivation. Area and production in vegetables have Increased from 5.6mha and 72.7mt in 1997-98 to 7.8mha and 125.9mt in 2007-08, but per capita availability of vegetable is yet too low, only 130g against optimum amount of 300g. This implies that a lot of improvement in vegetable production is yet to be made. Both open field and polyhouse cultures of vegetables are being followed. Use of manures, fertilisers, plant growth regulators, hormones, plant protection materials is quite high in vegetable cultivation. Packaging, transport and storage have key role, to play to reach vegetable products to the consumers. In this paper, an attempt has been made to highlight the importance of vegetables in balanced diet, the key issues of enhancement of productivity and income through right kind of production technology, quality enhancement through IPNS, export potential constraints in improving productivity. It also provides some suggestions for future lines of work.
展开▼
