11 June, Chhukha: The concluding ceremony of the Desuung National Service: Million Fruit Tree plantation in twenty Dzongkhag was held in Bongo Gewog under Chukha Dzongkhag. The ceremony was attended by the Hon’ble Agriculture Minister accompanied by the Member of Parliament (Chapcha-Bongo Constituency), Representatives from De-Suung Office, Director and the Officials from the Department of Agriculture, local Government leaders, farmers and the Desuups deployed in the field.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Forests in partnership with the De-Suung National Service has embarked on DNS: Million Fruit Tree plantation as a three months project which started from 15th March 2022 and completed the plantation of 1,019,785 number of fruit seedlings in less than 3 months.
The million fruit tree saplings were distributed and planted in all the 20 Dzongkhags covering 46,748 households in temperate region and 43,605 households in sub-tropical region. The one million fruit tree consisted of 12 different types of temperate fruits, 10 different types of sub-tropical fruit crops and a variety of Bodhi tree.
On an average each household received about 5-20 saplings depending on their land availability for the fruit plantation. As of 11th June 2022, about 1,019,785 fruit seedlings were planted across the country. Of which 409,401 number of fruit saplings were planted in temperate region, 605,384 numbers fruit saplings planted in Sub-tropical region and 5000 number of Bodhi tree (Chemshing). All the saplings planted have been Geo-coded using Mobile Operation Data Acquisition platform for ease of monitoring and follow up intervention in future.
For the implementation of De-Suung national Service: Million Fruit Tree Plantation Project, the Department of Agriculture has skilled 234 De-suups on the fruit tree plantation and management and were deployed to 202 Gewogs as De-Suup Gojays who further trained and led 1884 other De-suups for the million fruit tree plantation.
As a follow up action, the Ministry will regularly monitor the plantation sites to ensure its survival and will also conduct field surveys to determine the mortality based on geo-coded records and replace the dead or damaged seedlings. The ministry plans to implement the next phase of million fruit tree plantations in 2023 in similar mode.
-PPD
