According to VT Markose, director of Coconut Board, Rs 105 crore has been allotted for the Board's activities as against its proposal for a Rs 130- crore sanction.

For marketing and post-harvest activities alone, the Board has set aside an amount of Rs 230 lakh, said Markose. The Board plans to set up market information services and intelligence services to help the farmers get a good price. The Plan amount would also cover modernisation of coconut processors and introduction of improved copra driers.

During the Ninth Plan period the Board has planned to promote coconut as a dry fruit. The scheme is to give more importance to coconut as an edible seed than an oil seed. As coconut oil is a premium priced oil, the price of the coconuts are always dependent on the price of the oil. The Board is working towards shifting this pricedependency, said Markose.

"Copra already has a market. We'll promote it further by marketing a sizeable portion of the copra production as a dry fruit", he said. "For promotion of coconut as an edible fruit, marketing of tender coconut will be promoted. Other areas where the coconut production will be channelised is towards making desiccated coconut, coconut milk, coconut water in tetrapacks", he said.

By the end of the Plan period, the Board envisages coconut to be consumed more as a fruit, said Markose. Coconut oil will not be then the determining factor for the price of coconut, he added.

Coconut Board is planning large-scale promotion of packing and branding of coconut products and it also plans to explore domestic and foreign markets for these products.

According to Markose, the Board has proposed to pick up equity in the industrial units to be set up for manufacturing diversified products from coconut, but the government nod is awaited. The Board's other plans include providing financial aid tococonut-based industries, consultancy services and setting up a pilot testing plant with laboratory facilities for demonstrations.

To improve the quality of the products, financial aid would be provided to technology research institutions and industrial units to achieve agmark standardisation. This will check adulteration, which have been reported in many cases for desiccated coconut, said Markose.

At the end of the Ninth Plan period, the Board estimates a total production of 24 billion nuts. According to Markose, the production area is expected to increase to 2.67 million hectares and the productivity is expected to go up at 9,000 nuts per hectare.

At present the total production, according to the Directorate of Economics and Statistics, stands at 13.9 billion nuts in an area of 1.79 million hectares with a productivity of 7,777 nuts per hectare.

The production and productivity is likely to see a big rise in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, said Markose. In Kerala there would be moreemphasis on improving the productivity as there is less scope for increasing the production area, he said.

In Kerala the production area is highest at 9.8 lakh hectares with a production of 5905 million nuts per annum. But the productivity is at a low of 6017 nuts per hectare. Comparatively, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh have a high productivity of 14,554 nuts per hectare and 13,682 nuts per hectare respectively.

The production area in the two states stand at 2.98 lakh hectares and 90,000 hectares respectively with production at 4345 million nuts and 1231 million nuts respectively.