HARVESTING AND CURING. The crop is ready for harvesting in about 8 months. The leaves at htis time turn yellow and the pseudostems begin to dry. Rhizomes are lifted either with a digging fork or with mammutties. They are cleaned of roots and adhering soil particles.

The green ginger is soaked in wate to facilitate the removal of the skin. The skin is scraped off with pieces of sharpened bamboo or bits of sea-shells. The scraped produce is washed and dried in the sun for 3 or 4 days and hand-rubbed. It is again steeped in water for two hours, dried and then rubbed to remove all the remaining bits of the skin. Sun-drying also bleaches the produce. Peeling should be done with great care and skill. The essential oil which gives ginger the aromatic character is present in the epidermal cells and excessive or careless scraping will result in damaging these cells leading the loss of essential oils. Steel knives are not used as they are found to stain the produce. In Kerala there is also a practice of soaking the peeled rhizomes in a 2 per cent clear lime water for six hours before drying to give the dry ginger a good appearance. The dry ginger prepared in this way is not linked in foreign markets especially in the Middle East.

PRESERVATION OF SEEDS. Seed-ginger has to be stored for about 4 to 5 months from the time of harvesting to planting. Rhizome-rot, dry-rot, sprouting and shrivelling are commonly noticed in storage. Keeping the seed-rhizomes in pits is found to be the best method of storage. Healthy rhizomes are selected at the time of harvesting and are treated with 0.025% solution of Ceresan Wet for 30 minutes as a prophylactic measure against soft-rot. The treated rhizomes are then dried in shade and stored in pits dug in a cool place and protected from sun and rain. The pits should not be more than 1 metre deep. A layer of sand and sawdust is put at the bottom of the pit before storage. Either the pit is left as such or is covered with a wooden plank leaving some space betweeen the seeds and the plank and plastered with mud. In the lattercase a small hole is made in the plank through which a hollow bamboo is inserted to provide aeration for the rhizomes. At higher altitudes seed-ginger can be stored safely up to the end of May in an undreground store. The trials conducted at the Central Food Technological Research Institute, Mysore, have shown that a combination-treatment such as a protective skin-coating containing a fungicide and plant growth inhibitor coupled with packing in polythene bage will be useful in the storage and transport of ginger rhizome without deterioration.

YIELD. The average yield of green ginger is estimated at about 5000-10000 kg per ha. The recovery of dry ginger varies from 15-25 per cent.

In India, grading is generally done only in Himachal Pradesh. The first grade popularly known as gola in the local market is very bold and round bits of dry ginger, having the maximum dry matter and low fibre contents. The second grade known as gatti includes bits of bold round to oblong and is smaller than the first grade. The third and the fourth grades are smaller bits with a small amount of dry matter and high fibre contents.

TURMERIC. Turmeric (Curcuma longa L.) is an important and a useful dye, with varied uses in drug and cosmetic industries. It is used medicinally for external application and taken internally as a stimulant.

'Kum-kum', popular with every house-wife, is also a bi-product of turmeric. It finds a place in offerings on religious and ceremonial ocassions. A type of starch can also be extracted from a particular type of turmeric. India is one of the leading growers, with about 79,300 ha under this crop, producing 1,43,900 tonnes per annum.

GENERAL BOTANICAL ASPECTS. Turmeric is the dried rhizome of Curcuma longa L., a herbaceous perennial belonging to the family Zingiberaceae and a native of India or China. Besides India, it is cultivated in Srilanka, Indonesia, China, Peru, Jamaica and other triopical and subtropical countries. The plant is propagated from rhizomes. The leaves are long, broad, lanceolate and bright green. The flowers are pale yellow and borne on dried spikes. The pseudostems are shorter than leaves. The rhizomes are ready for harvesting about 7-9 months after planting.

CLIMATE AND SOIL. The crop requires a warm and humid climate. In heavy-rainfall tracts of the west-coast, it is grown as a rain-fed crop and in other areas it is cultivated under irrigation. The cultivated types are found from almost the sea-level upto an altitude of about 1200 metres. The wild types are seen at higher elevations. Turmeric thrives in well-drained, fertile, sandy and clayey, black, red or alluvial loams rich in humus and uniform in texture. Rich loamy soils having natural drainage and irrigation facilities are the best. Turmeric cannot stand water stagnation or alkalinity.

ROTATIONS. In wet land turmeric is rotated with paddy, sugarcane, banana etc. once in 3 or 4 years. In garden lands it is grown in rotation with sugarcane, chilli,onion, garlic, elephant's-foot, yam, vegetables, pulses, ragi and maize. In Gujarat, it is cultivated as a crop subsidiary to ginger and in other areas with chilli and quick-growing vegetables. Often castor and pigeon-pea are planted on borders and on irrigation channels to provide shade. In West Bengal, turmeric is grown as an intercrop with mango, jack-tree and litchi and on the west coast with coconut and arecanut.

CULTIVATION. The land is ploughed 4-6 times to bring the soil to a fine tilth. The land is divided into beds of 1 metre width and convinient length with a spacing of 30 cm between the beds for drainage channels. In the case of the irrigated crop, ridges and furrows are prepared and the rhizomes are planted in shallow pits on the top of the ridges. Spacing generally adopted is 45-60 cm between the ridges and 15-22 cm between the plants. In beds rhizomes are planted 22-35 cm apart in each direction. For sowing both the mother-rhizomes the fingers are used. The fingers are cut into pieces each 4-5 cm long, and the mother rhizomes are planted as such or planted into two; each having atleast one sound bud. The seed is sometimes sprouted under moist straw before sowing. Depending on the spacing adopted and the extent of mixed cropping the seed-rate may vary from 2,000-2,500 kg per ha. AS an intercrop in a fruit garden it may be as low as 400-500 kg per ha. The crop is sown form April to July, depending upon the tract. AS in the case of ginger, mulching the bed with green leaves is an important practice beneficial to this crop when planting is done on raised beds. Two or three mulchings are given, the first immediately after planting and the second and the third at intervals of 40-50 days.