Horticulture department keen on propagating bamboo

Hyderabad: The Telangana horticulture department is keen on propagating bamboo, said L Venkatram Reddy, Director of Horticulture and Telangana Bamboo Mission. He was speaking at an interactive session on bamboo.

Telangana Bamboo Mission, Bamboo Society of India in collaboration with URAVU a Kerala based non-governmental organisation organised the one-day seminar.

Venkatram Reddy said the department has chalked out the action plan of covering 2, 714 lakh hectares under bamboo and a budget of Rs 11 crore allocated for the year of 2018-19 and the focus would be mainly on nurseries and area expansion to develop this sector. "We will strive hard to take forward this Bamboo Mission."

R K Mehta, Chairman of Bamboo Society of India, said, "We believe there can be about 500 industries set up in Telangana and about 20 clusters. We can go ahead with plantation and a lot of quantity will be available and the industries can be set up on value addition basis. As value addition, it has a great demand and will create jobs and boost GDP by way of exports."

With the help of bamboo, the artisans have successfully produced 6,000 different products made out of bamboo which can be an alternative to the plastic, steel, and other daily use items.

G B K Rao, CMD, Pragati Resorts said, "We use a lot of bamboo products and grow bamboo at Pragati Resorts. We are planning to set up bamboo sheds and reduce the usage of cement."