Protected Cultivation of Horticultural Crops as a Livelihood Opportunity in Western India: An Economic Assessment

Abstract

Protected cultivation is an innovative way of raising seasonal and off-seasonal crops under a controlled environment. Vegetables and flower crops have tremendous potential to augment productivity, generate employment, utilize land efficiently and enhance export. This study was undertaken to assess the economic feasibility of protected cultivation in the high export potential zones of the Pune and Nasik districts of Maharashtra, India, by employing project analytical tools and the regression model. The results revealed that the cultivation of flowers and vegetables under protected cultivation was highly lucrative with high investment. The protected cultivation of rose and capsicum had higher cultivation cost (300%), gross return (250%) and net return (190%) as compared to open cultivation. Moreover, most of the crops grown in polyhouses are highly profitable at different discount rates (7%, 10% and 12%), whereas a few crops were rewarding under shade net condition with subsidies. Factors such as literacy (p < 0.05), income (p < 0.05), access to subsidy (p < 0.05) and the risk orientation index (p < 0.01) were found statistically significant in technology adoption. In the context of a changing climate and shrinking land resources, water scarcity, incidence of pests and diseases, an ever-increasing population, low productivity under open conditions and changes in consumer’s preference are the drivers for switching over to protected cultivation. In the recent past, protected cultivation has been gaining importance in different parts of the country, including Maharashtra. The policy implications are creating modern infrastructure, enhanced application of ICTs, maximum crop production with minimum utilization of land and institutional support to promote technology on a commercial scale.

An Insightful Exploration of Protected Cultivation in Horticultural Crops: A Comprehensive Review

“…Vegetables, such as tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and lettuce, are the primary crops grown under protected cultivation, fruits (strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, and so on) [10], and flowers (roses, gerberas and carnations etc.) [11]. In India, the major green harvests created under Protected Cultivation incorporate tomatoes, cucumbers, capsicums, roses, and gerberas [11].…”

“…), organic products (strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and so on) [10], and blossoms (roses, gerberas and carnations, and so on). In India, the major agricultural harvests delivered under protected cultivation incorporate tomatoes, cucumbers, capsicums, roses, and gerberas [11]. As per the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the worldwide region under protected cultivation was assessed to be 2.76 million hectares in 2022.…”

Characterization of the Difference between Day and Night Temperatures on the Growth, Photosynthesis, and Metabolite Accumulation of Tea Seedlings

“…Moreover, it could be the main reason why the tea cultivation area in the country cannot fully achieve the coverage of fine tea varieties. In order to break through the natural growth environment barrier, most of the modern agricultural techniques are widely applied in crop cultivation mainly through the control of the light, temperature, water, and soil, which not only shorten the growth cycle but also improve the quality [ 11 , 12 , 13 ]. The protected cultivation of tea has recently been developed, especially in northern China.…”

Development of an automated mobile robotic sprayer to prevent workers' exposure of agro‐chemicals inside polyhouse

“…Polyhouse cultivation is an integral part of precision horticulture which envisages precise control of climate, water, fertilizer, and so on (Reddy, 2016), by technological interventions such as automatic climate control (Jat, Rajwade, et al, 2020), Internet-of-Things-based irrigation, wireless data transfer using ZigBee (Jonnala & Sathyanarayana, 2015), sitespecific input management (Chandel et al, 2016(Chandel et al, , 2021. The proven benefits of these technologies include offseason cultivation, higher input use efficiency, higher production and productivity, better quality of the agricultural produce; all these lead to an improved livelihood compared to open field cultivation (Bisbis et al, 2018;Chakraborty et al, 2022;Pachiyappan et al, 2022;Rao et al, 2022;Spehia, 2021).…”