Using sarees to protect chilli nurseries from vagaries of climate, wild animals

If you drive through the interiors of Khammam district, you will find many colourful sarees draped on agricultural fields. At first glance, it looks as if some washermen are drying the sarees after washing them. But a closer look tells a different story — underneath the sarees lies a chilli nursery.

“It is a kind of cover for the delicate seeds that were just planted. A sudden rain could take the top soil away, which will force the farmer to sow again. Each of the sarees protects hundreds of planted seeds underneath it,” Boddupalli Narasimha Rao, a seed farmer, told businessline. He has let out two acres near Vatsavai (NTR district) along the Andhra Pradesh-Telangana border to chilli farmers.

Though he is not a chilli farmer, Rao lets his land out for chilli farmers to raise their nurseries. They take care of their chunk of nursery and plant the seeds of a chilli variety of his choice. “All that I do is water the nursery three times a day. The rest of the work (getting the seed and taking care of the nursery) is taken care of by them,” Rao said. He takes a fee of ₹50 for every yard of the nursery on his two-acre plot.

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“The seedlings grown on this collective nursery is enough to grow chilli on 100 acres. Some of them brought 50 packets (10 gm each), while others brought 100 and even 200 packets to suit their requirements,” Rao said.

Animal attacks

Dr Jagdeesh, former Director of Research at Prof. Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University, said the technique (using sarees) also protected the plants from attacks by wild animals such as wild boars. “They are afraid to step in, seeing sarees which indicate movement of humans. Farmers, however, you should use sarees of different colours. If it (colour) is uniform, the animals are not intimidated,” he said.

Telangana ranks second in chilli area, production and first in productivity. It produced 5.32 lakh tonnes of chilli in 2023 from 2.78 lakh acres. It accounts for 13.27 per cent in the country’s chilli area and 23.34 per cent in production.

The production, however, saw a decline last year with black thrips continuing to devastate the crop. The State produced 7.16 lakh tonnes in 2022.