Black pepper the ‘king of spices’ is one of the oldest, most popular and most traded spice in the world. india is a major producer, consumer and exporter of black pepper. this perennial vine mostly grown for its berries, which extensively used as spices and medicine. due to its climbing nature, black pepper plants need some kind of support. black pepper vines are usually cultivated by allowing them to climb on either living supports like erythrina spp., mango tree, jackfruit tree, coconut tree etc., or non-living supports like deadwood poles, teak poles, concrete posts, granite stones, brick structure etc. the shortage of living supports, high risk of disease on supports and the eventual fall of the vine are some of the problem faced by the farmers. the non-living support like concrete posts and granite stones are heated up in summer and which cause damage to black pepper vines and it requires initial investments. generally, stem cuttings are used for its propagation. the different methods like rapid multiplication method, serpentine method, trench method and column method are used for producing rooted black pepper cutting. the present invention discloses cultivating black pepper using pvc (poly vinyl chloride) pipe. a pvc pipe of length 4.5 meter and diameter 20 cm is used (length and diameter may be changed according to convenience). make holes of size 2 x 5 cm, 2 cm apart vertically around the pipe. the holes are start 50 cm and 102.5 cm meter alternatively from one end of the pipe. in a 20 cm diameter pipe we can make 14 columns of such holes. fix the holed pvc pipe firmly on earth about 50 cm deep where the pepper vines are to be planted (fig.1). put a circular plastic sheet inside the pipe in order to prevent the mixture have direct contact with the soil. fill the pipe with partially decomposed coir pith and cow dung powder @ 3:1 ratio fortified with bio-control agent trichoderma harrzianum. plant the rooted saplings around the pipe in front of the holes starts from the bottom. the vines are allowed to trail on the pipe ensuring that the nodes may keep in contact with the potting mixture in the pipe with the help of ‘v’ shaped small pieces of mid ribs of coconut leaves or small wires. by this method in normal case the roots in each node of the vine only help the vines to stick on the support, but here the roots of each node develop as functional root and they receive nutrients from the mixture and this will promote the growth of the plant. it has been observed that the plants grown in this method showed 5 times growth compared to ordinary method. to produce rooted cuttings only, plant 7 saplings around the pipe otherwise plant 3 or 4 saplings. the black pepper vines start yielding only after 2 or 3 years, but here it start yielding from first year. in traditional method, we will get only a small percentage of rooted saplings (30-40% field setting), but here we will get rooted saplings directly from the pipe. from a single pipe, we can produce minimum 300 to 350 rooted single node cuttings in a year that is we will get minimum income of 6000 (300 x rs.20/saplings) in a year from sapling alone. aprt from single node cuttings rooted top shoots and laterals are also getting. black pepper cultivation by method is named as bpdi (black pepper pvc pipe double income) method because one can use this method for producing black pepper as well as rooted black pepper cuttings and hence he will get income from two ways.
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