Albert Howard First Report on the Fruit Experiments at Pusa

Annotation

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Here is perhaps no other country in the world where an orchard judiciously planted would yield better results than in India and make a handsome return to its owner in the course of a few years. An area of ten or twenty acres of land which can be had at a low rate, planted exclusively with the choicer kinds of fruit trees, would, in my Opinion, be an inheritance worth having specially in Behar. Manual of Gardening for India, 1863) Although considerable progress has been made in fruit-growing since the introduction of railways, and extensive gardens are to be met with in various parts of India, for example, at Saharanpur, Bangalore, Nagpur, Bassein in the Konkan, in the Khasia Hills, and in some of the hill valleys in the North-fest, yet there are no records of any permanent experiments on the growth and management of fruit trees in the plains such as are to be found in England and the United States. Advantage has, therefore, been taken of the Agricultural Research Institute at Pusa to initiate a series of experiments designed to throw light on the behaviour of Indian fruit trees. It is hoped that as a result of this work facts will be ascertained which can be made use of by those engaged in fruit-growing for-profit in India.