Harvesting of tender coconuts improves yields and profitability of coconut farming in India

ABSTRACT

An experiment was conducted at Kasaragod, Kerala, India for six years to study the impact of different coconut harvesting treatments on growth, yield and return. The treatments were; harvesting tender nuts from January to June and mature nuts from July to December, harvesting tender nuts from July to December and mature nuts from January to June, harvesting tender nuts throughout the year, harvesting tender nuts in alternate years, harvesting alternate bunches for tender nuts and harvesting of mature nuts throughout the year. The results showed that palms that underwent tender nut harvesting throughout the year, compared with harvesting mature nuts throughout the year, recorded high yields (175 nuts/palm), three times high net returns, and 68.7% high energy use efficiency. This study demonstrated the potential of harvesting tender nuts to improve the profitability and energy balance of coconut production.

KEYWORDS:

• Cocos nucifera
• harvesting sequence
• system economics
• tender nut
• energy use efficiency
• energy budgeting

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

All the data pertaining to manuscript are already presented in this manuscript. Further, the data can be availed from the corresponding author on request.

Author contributions

Ravi Bhat- visualisation, project administration, formal analysis, writing original draft, review and editing; Surekha - methodology, investigation, validation, formal analysis, writing original draft, review and editing; P. Subramanian - conceptualization, methodology, resources, supervision; V. Selvamani - soil and leaf sample analysis for nutrients; M. Arivalagan - biochemical analysis of the coconut water; H. P. Maheswarappa - conceptualization, methodology.