India to emerge as sole supplier of quality cotton: Minister Goyal

To enhance productivity in cotton, India is working on interventions like high density planting system (HDPS), drip irrigation, rain water harvesting, inter-cropping, promotion of best farm practices and mechanisation of cotton harvesting for reducing the contamination of cotton and improvement in farm income, the minister said inaugurating a webinar on cotton organised by the Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI).

The industry should focus on increasing productivity, improving cultivation practices, reducing import dependency and creating self-sufficiency of extra long staple cotton, organic cotton and contaminant-controlled cotton in the country, an official release quoted the minister as saying.

The domestic textile Industry, instead of importing contaminant controlled cotton, should come together to strategise and implement more sustainable ways of cotton production in collaboration with cotton research institutes and farmers, he said.

The focus should be on enhancing our productivity from the current level of around 450 kg lint per hectare to at least 800-900 kg lint per hectare, he added.

Around 67 per cent of India’s cotton is grown on rain-fed areas and 33 per cent on irrigated areas. India is the largest cotton producer in the world. Its production of 360 lakh bales (6.12 million metric tonnes) accounts for around 25 per cent of the total global cotton production.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)