Located in the barren wastelands of Udaipur and Chittaurgarh Districts of Rajasthan in India, the first phase of plantations has been completed. 110 hectares of wasteland have been planted with about 130,000 trees in July 2009.

Plantations

The image to the left is of the actual plantations on the Devron Ka Khera site in mid September 2009. The image after that is that of the same site taken just before plantations, in June 2009.

The team has gained invaluable operational experience in all aspects of conducting large scale plantations in a short span of time. Expertise in keeping both costs as well as mortality within tight limits has been acquired. Processes have been evolved and documented to ensure smooth scaling up to the thousands of hectares to be planted next year.

Several fertiliser and irrigation trials have been scientifically designed and included in the plantations to gain empirical knowledge of the most optimum planting protocol.

Plantations of Jatropha, Pongamia and  Azardirachta are being blended to ensure that the risks of mono-cropping are eliminated.

The targeted 100 hectare of plantations for the Year 2009 have been completed.  Another 1000 hectares will be planted  by 2010 and 2000 hectares by 2011.

Nursery

Next years plantations on over 1000 hectares require almost 1.5 million seedlings ready for transplanting by May 2010.  Special nurseries have been established, and well over 1.5 million seedlings have already germinated and are growing well.

Since highly productive mother trees are critical to ensure high productivity in the plantations, therefore clonal as well as half-sib replication of specially selected trees take place in our nurseries.

The parent tree selection has been done after two years of systematic survey of localities where these trees are native and naturally regenerating, identifying healthy, naturally conditioned individuals that are highly productive.

Oil Extraction

Trial extraction unit being set up on site in Rajasthan, with specific focus on researching possible commercial byproducts of the oil cake.