bigger nutmeg harvest

Ishara MUDUGAMUWA

The Export Agriculture Department has introduced new technology to get a bigger harvest of nutmeg, an Agriculture Department official said.

The country imports 500 million of nutmegs annually. With the introduction of this technology, the harvest will be increased, the officer said. He said there are no special varieties of nutmeg in the country. Farmers used to reproduce them by seeds. It is necessary to take seeds from selected trees to yield a bumper harvest. Though there are male and female nutmeg trees, it is difficult to identify the sex of the trees before flowering.

This problem does not arise with this technology. It is expected to yield 10,000 nutmegs from this budded variety.