The word ‘Horticulture’ is the compound word of two Latin words ‘Hortus’ means garden . and ‘Colere’ means cultivate. The art of systematic growing of fruits, vegetables, flowers, spices,plantation crops, medicinal & aromatic plants in small plots is called ‘Horticulture’. Even till today, the income from the horticultural crops has been more profitable than the incomes from the agricultural crops. Therefore, in recent years, special emphasis is given for growing horticultural crops in India.
Development in India:
- In India geographical as well as socio-economic factors are ideal for the development of horticulture. It has good potential for growing a wide variety of horticultural crops.
- The government of India identified horticultural crops as a means of diversification for making agriculture more profitable.
- There has been an improvement in the adoption of technology for increase in the production of horticultural crops. India is second largest producer of fruits & vegetables in the world next to china.
- India produced 257.3 million tonnes of horticulture products from 23.2 million hectares.
