{"id":1370,"date":"2021-11-14T10:40:22","date_gmt":"2021-11-14T10:40:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nilgiridiscoverycentre.com\/?p=1370"},"modified":"2021-11-15T10:20:15","modified_gmt":"2021-11-15T10:20:15","slug":"the-famed-nilgiri-potato","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nilgiridiscoverycentre.com\/index.php\/2021\/11\/14\/the-famed-nilgiri-potato\/","title":{"rendered":"The Famed Nilgiri Potato"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

(Potato is said to be in high demand in these times of lock down. No wonder !!<\/em> We all know that it was Collector Sullivan who introduced, among other things, potato to the Nilgiris with the assistance of an English soldier-farmer, Johnstone, and an African assistant, Jones. The first harvest fetched mammoth tubers weighing five lbs !!  What is the rest of the story or history<\/em>? )<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The experiments  were subsequently extended to Wellington where it was found that three and even four crops could be raised in a year. In 1847 Major Ouchterlony, a British plan\u00adter, in whose memory the Ouchter\u00adlony Valley in Gudalur Taluk still exists, found that Ceylon (Srilanka)  offered a very good market for Nilgiri potatoes. Though the total area under potatoes was only 186 acres, the yield was phenomenal owing to the virgin soil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The establishment of the Gov\u00adernment Botanical Gardens in Ootacamund in 1848 gave an impetus to potato cultivation, which began to attract the attention of the ryots, especially Badagas. They were pro\u00advided with facilities including the supply of seeds from the Botanical Gardens and, as a result, the area under potatoes expanded to 754 acres in 1876. The European settlers also started cultivating pota\u00adtoes on the lands around their houses. Thus the cultivation of po\u00adtatoes established itself as a paying proposition among the inhabitants of the Nilgiris and grew into a re\u00adgular industry among them  towards the be\u00adginning of the last  century. The possibilities of exporting the com\u00admodity to Ceylon, Burma and Straits Settlements were explor\u00aded by the authorities and new va\u00adrieties were imported and experi\u00admented upon at the Botanical Gar\u00addens from 1910 to 1914.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Fran\u00adcis, (author of The Nilgiris Gazetteer), a very enthusiastic British Col\u00adlector, who evinced a keen inter\u00adest in the development of potato cultivation as a means of better\u00ading the economic lot of the people here, obtained permission from Government to import two tons of good seed potatoes from Australia for distribution among the native growers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The question of expanding seed production in 1915-16 led to the es\u00adtablishment of the Government Agricultural Research Station in 1917 at Nanjanad.  Work was origi\u00adnally confined to the task of evolv\u00ading suitable varieties of potato for the Nilgiris from the seeds  im\u00adported from the UK and Australia. In the va\u00adrietal sphere, 47 varieties are now under study at the station. After  35 years of trial, a variety called \u201cGreat Scot\u201d has been found eminently suitable for the Nilgiris due its \u201cearly ma\u00adturity, cosmopolitan habit, round medium tubers, smooth white skin, fleet eyes and hard flesh\u201d.  Next came Royal  Kidney, which belonged to the species of Great Scot except for its shape. Bencruachan, Kerr\u2019s Pink Edward, Golden Wonder and Bressie were other notables.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to research valuable work has been done on the manurial side also with the result that a brand of manure called the Nanjanad Mixture was evolved. This served as a standard for all manufactures of potato fertilisers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After 1957, the responsibility of keeping the potato commercially viable rested with the Central Potato Re\u00adsearch Institute at Muthorai.  It is this institute which is facing the threat of closure due to short sighted bureaucratic reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nilgiri Documentation Centre<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Potato is said to be in high demand in these times of lock down. No wonder !! We all know that it was Collector Sullivan who introduced, among other things, potato to the Nilgiris with the assistance of an English soldier-farmer, Johnstone, and an African assistant, Jones. The first harvestRead More →<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1371,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51,52],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nilgiridiscoverycentre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1370"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nilgiridiscoverycentre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nilgiridiscoverycentre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nilgiridiscoverycentre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nilgiridiscoverycentre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1370"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/nilgiridiscoverycentre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1612,"href":"http:\/\/nilgiridiscoverycentre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1370\/revisions\/1612"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nilgiridiscoverycentre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nilgiridiscoverycentre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nilgiridiscoverycentre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nilgiridiscoverycentre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}