About HRC

Horticulture Research Centre (HRC), Patharchatta was created in 1968 under Govind Ballabh Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar. It is situated at 29.5 0 North latitude and 79 . 3 0 East longitude. The altitude of the place is 243.84 meters above the mean sea level. The climate of this place is humid sub- tropics with maximum temperature ranging from 31.5 0 C to 41.1 0 C in summer and minimum temperature varying from 2.0 0 C to 10.0 0 C in winter. Monsoon occurs from third week of June to the middle of September. Frost may be expected from last week of December to the first week of February. The soil type is clay loam having about 7.5 pH. Horticulture Research Centre is spread in an area of about 176 hectare, exclusively for research and commercial aspects of fruits. The centre is enriched with a wide wealth of fruit crops like, mango, guava, litchi, citrus, papaya, peach, plum, pear, aonla, ber, bael, Karonda, custard apple, sapota, jackfruit, jamun, Banana etc. The centre has its own state of the art fruit nursery to nourish its own as well as of the farmers requirement by providing authentic plant material of fruit crops.

Mission: To enhance productivity of fruit crops on sustainable basis.

Mandate

• Management of genetic resources & varietal evaluation in various fruit crops.
• Generation of technologies for enhancing productivity & quality of fruit crops through knowledge based, technology driven and farmer centric approach.
• To facilitate the teaching and research works of UG and PG students.
• To produce elite planting materials of fruit crops to the farmers.

Activities

• Augmentation, evaluation and management of germplasm of fruit crops
• Varietal evaluation of fruit crops for its commercialization.
• Conductance of various experiments of ICAR-AICRP-fruits and other externally funded projects.
• Standardization of agro-techniques (i.e. high density planting, pruning, crop regulation, input use efficiency, fertilizer and irrigation scheduling, nutrient management and fertigation, canopy management & architecture, rejuvenation, expansion of harvesting period, propagation etc).
• Studies on insect pest and disease management.
• The post graduate students of Horticulture, Entomology, Pathology and other disciplines conduct their thesis research work at the centre.
• The under graduate & post graduate students use to perform their practical classes at the Centre.
• Production of quality planting materials of various fruit crops.
• Management of orchard and production of fruit crops.
• Training of farmers on fruit cultivation through field visit and demonstration of technology.

Major Achievements

Till date 21 varieties of different fruit crops & several technologies on various aspects of fruit cultivation have been released from the centre. Apart from above activities, about 45-50 thousand elite planting materials of various fruits are being produced every year and made available to the farmers.