Harjeet Singh Brar
I am Harjeet Singh Brar of Village Deleanwali of District Faridkot in Punjab. I own 70 acres of land. I got the inspiration for kinnow farming when I first visited the kinnow orchard of Balwinder Singh Tikka of Abul Khurana Village. To begin with, I planted the kinnows only on 6 Acres of land under high density planting system. Initially I faced a lot of problems such as Phytophthora Foot Rot, Citrus Psylla and Leaf Miner. But I was fully dedicated to achieve success in kinnow farming and was not deterred by the failures, so I decided to take expert training from PAU, KVK Faridkot and Department of Horticulture to hone my skills. This was very beneficial to me and next I installed drip irrigation system with the guidance of PAU experts. To store the canal water, I also made a 42 lakh liters capacity water tank. To uplift the water from the water tank, I use solar energy which comes from the solar panels installed at my farm. Once I achieved considerable success in the kinnow farming, I expanded the land under kinnow farming from 6 acres to 24 acres in 2012.
I have planted the kinnows at 20 m by 10 m and at 20 m by 15 m. I have employed indigenous aero blast spray pump which ensures uniform spray application. This has helped me in tackling the menace of Citrus Psylla, White Fly and Leaf Miner to a great extent. I designed a low cost kinnow cleaning cum grading machine which has the capacity of 2 tonnes per hour. This has proved really beneficial to me as it now just costs Rs 125 to clean and grade 2 tonnes of fruit as compared to Rs 1000 on manual cleaning. Any produce which is mechanically graded, fetches premium prices. I got the idea to design the low cost kinnow grading machine from Gurraj Singh Virk, who is an eminent kinnow grower of the region. I have all kinds of modern instruments for farming such as Tractor, Trailer, Cultivator, Planker, Ridger, Seed Drill, Leveler, Aero blast Sprayer and Kinnow Cleaning cum Grading Machine.
