Kashmir looks at flowers to help business bloom

Jul 1, 2007, 3:30 GMT

Srinagar, July 1 (IANS) Jammu and Kashmir's budding flower business is ready to blossom with the state keen to enter the $11 billion international floriculture trade and add a million jobs.

The flowers are already in bloom in the Kashmir valley, ready to maximise the potential of the business.

The sprawling Siraj Garden on the eastern bank of the Dal Lake here with the Zabarwan range providing the picturesque backdrop has over 350,000 tulip bulbs and is already being tipped as one of the largest tulip gardens in Asia.

Steps are also afoot to grow three million more tulips next spring to add to the famed valley's beauty - and give a fillip to the economy of a state that has been grappling with incessant secessionist violence.

'Floriculture is all about creating new employment opportunities... We are keen to focus on a million jobs,' state Agriculture Minister Abdul Aziz Zargar told IANS.

Towards this ultimate aim, the government has distributed resources for creating poly greenhouses with minor irrigation systems to interested entrepreneurs all over the valley, either free or at 50 percent subsidy rates.

The scheme, under the centrally sponsored Technology Mission, was available in every district in the Kashmir valley.

The global floricultural sector, growing at a rate of 6-10 percent per annum, is estimated at $11 billion. Facing tough competition from traditional production centres (in the US, Japan, Italy, and the Netherlands), India has also enrolled itself in the market with its flower industry worth $71 million and is working towards an export target of $1 billion by 2012, according to the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA).

Kashmir is hoping to play a vital role in achieving that target.

'Kashmir, of course, has an unlimited potential for the floriculture industry, capable of boosting the state's economy,' said Fida Iqbal, flower culture development assistant (extension) at the department of agriculture here.

According to him, Kashmir has diverse flora and unique climatic conditions and could prove to be a market leader in floricultural products.

'We could beat Holland not only in recreational flower gardens but also in exporting these and other cut flowers to all the neighbouring countries,' Iqbal said.

Kashmir, with its cold climate, is in a unique position to grow a large variety of flowers, including temperate flowers, besides tulips, and cultivating a wider variety of lilium, roses, lupins, hawthorns, wild crocuses, armedias, primulas and vincas.

Under the government's initiative, around 100,000 lilium bulbs, imported from Holland, have already multiplied into over 400,000 bulbs at a cut flower garden in Nunar Ganderbal on the outskirts of the city.

The one hitch is the absence of a proper marketing strategy to commercially exploit the potential of the valley.

'Quality, environmentally sound production, a wider assortment and standard grading should be the weapons to compete in the market competition,' Iqbal said.

Unlike other places already thriving on the flower trade, such as New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi, Kashmir lacks post harvest technology.

'Flying international flights from Srinagar merely won't help. We have to build cold storages and proper cargo handling facilities like some key Indian airports have,' Iqbal suggested.

© 2007 Indo-Asian News Service