Ryan Mascarenhas
On July 10, 7 students of Don Bosco College of Agriculture, Sulcorna did a demonstration on grafting at Immaculate Conception high school Dabhal. Agriculture students are from fourth year of BSc course and are for their RAWE (rural agricultural work experience) program. School students from class 5 to 10 attended the program that was conducted in the school hall. Students were first introduced to the importance of agriculture and agricultural scenario of the village. Students were convinced to grow and nurture plants as plant serve us food. Later students were divided into small groups of 10-15 students and they were taught different techniques of propagation of plants. Many villagers of Dabhal have multi-storeyed cropping (kullaghar) and they grow black pepper hence students were thought ‘V’ shaped and inverted ‘V’ shaped grafting in Black Pepper. Grafting in black pepper on Piper colubrinum species avoids wilt disease in pepper. Being a mining belt cashew is also cultivated on large scale hence students were also taught softwood grafting in cashew. That is grafting on one year old cashew seedling. During rainy season lot of mango seedlings are found, so epicotyl grafting on 2-3 week old mango seedlings was demonstrated along with mango softwood grafting. Air layering (ghutee grafting) was shown on sapota and citrus. Finally rose budding was shown to the students.
Later, students themselves were allowed to do grafting under the supervision of agriculture students. Students of Dabhal acquired the skills of grafting, layering and budding and now they are able to propagate plants on their own. Students felt the need of growing plants and maintain them for their own sustenance.
