The National Medicinal Plants Board (NMPB), formed for promoting the cultivation of medicinal plants in the country, has sought nearly four-fold increase in its allocation for the next Five Year Plan period with a view to expand the ongoing schemes and promote related trade.
The NMPB which has been implementing a Centrally Sponsored Scheme during 11th Plan with an outlay of Rs.485 crore has now asked for Rs.1710 crore which is 3.53 times hike from the earlier plan, sources said.
The scheme is primarily aimed at supporting market driven medicinal plants cultivation on private lands with backward linkages for establishment of nurseries for supply of quality planting materials and forward linkages for post-harvest management, processing, marketing infrastructure, certification and crop insurance in project mode. This is being achieved by cultivation of medicinal plants in identified zones/clusters within selected districts of States having potential for cultivation of certain medicinal plants and promotion of such cultivation following good agricultural practices.
The NMPB has so far set up 636 nurseries of medicinal plants, covering 51308 hectares of land for cultivation of medicinal plants under the scheme. Support was provided to 25 post-harvest infrastructure units while putting in place 5 processing units and 2 market promotion units.
“As the commercial scale cultivation of medicinal plants is critical for assured supply of quality raw materials to the industry, the support being provided for this purpose needs to be enhanced for covering large projects and more species of medicinal plants. Also, facilities for supply of quality seedlings and saplings and processing of medicinal plants with forward & backward linkages, quality certification and support for collection and marketing of plant-based raw materials are essentially required to attract farmers towards cultivation of medicinal plants and promote the related trade,” sources said while justifying increased allocation.
The allocation will be used to expand the cultivation status of medicinal plants over 2,00,000 hectares of land (Rs.600 crore), for induction of voluntary certification scheme for medicinal plants (Rs.30 crore), for expansion of organic produce certification scheme (Rs.50 crore), for development of 20 Medicinal Plants Processing Zones (Rs.400 crore), for raising 2000 nurseries (Rs.480 crore), and for providing minimum support price to the collectors of medicinal plants and marketing support to the farmers (Rs.150 crore), sources said.
The work will be taken up through State Medicinal Plants Boards, Forest Departments, Horticulture Missions, Special Purpose Vehicles of Industries, Quality Council of India and Agencies of Ministry of Tribal Affairs-Agriculture-Forests & Environment.