Wednesday 4 March 2009

Nutmeg gender Identification!




Every farmer knows and you may not know that female plants bear fruits in Nutmeg plants (Nutmeg-an aromatic cash crop find in tropical climate is dioecious variety). Normally it takes up to 5 years to get yield. Just imagine the shock of a nutmeg farmer when he realises that the plant he has been watering , pampering is a useless male plant !then he has to go for budding and then a waiting of 2 more years!Then you may ask me why cant you go for a female plant ?But how will you make out a female plant ? "Nothing is apparent " in a plant helping to identifying the gender of a nutmeg plant. Universities suggests DNA analysis(to be more specific I have to tell you polymerised chain reaction based seedling sex diagnostic assay) and the process is out of reach of an ordinary farmer and is a bit complicated too.

Here comes our hero Moideen Naina! He is in nutmeg farming since his retirement from railway service. Patience is the only word you cannot find in his dictionary. So he was not able to think of imagining a waiting of 5 years to identifying the gender of the plant. So he started his search or as you call it his research to see whether any difference is there in male and female plants. Started by chopping plants leaves adding ,extracting,subtracting,......

No use ......years have passed....age was in his side (he is in his mid seventies!) but one day he came running from his farm only to lift his wife (I was told , but both fell down ....t..h...u...d ) and dance ''eureka, eureka ''.

Though Naina is not prepared to reveal that which chemical formula made him dance,he is ready to help his fellow farmers. Just pluck two or three leaves of "The nutmeg plant in question ' and just drop the sap oozing out from the leaves, to 5 ml of colour less solution invented by Naina, shake well only to see a wonderful colour change. If it changes to dark amber certainly you can dance with joy. Yes it will be a female plant and if its light amber you can very well bid good bye to the unfortunate (male) sapling!

Now you can very well separate male and female plants in your nursery and go for cent percent sure lucky nutmeg farming with out cracking your nut. 

*************************************************
(Updated as on 14/10/2013)



Sri.Moideen Naina left this world of nutmeg for ever on 02/10/2013......

11 comments:

poor-me/പാവം-ഞാന്‍ said...

Happy news for all nutmeg farmers!
Now you can recognise the gender of nutmeg plant at the sappling stage itself.

ബിന്ദു കെ പി said...

"Just imagine the shock of a nutmeg farmer when he realises that the plant he has been watering , pampering is a useless male plant !then he has to go for budding and then a waiting of 2 more years!"

Few years back, same incident happened in our house also!

congratulations to Mr Moideen naina. But where will we go for that 'secret solution' invented by Naina?

poor-me/പാവം-ഞാന്‍ said...

Want to get identify the gender in advance?

Unknown said...

U have done a great job!

Anonymous said...

U r realy great!

jyo.mds said...

Wow--unbelievable--Mr.moideen naina the great --but i have seen grafting on male plants with female branch [or bud].i will find out the tecniq wen i go next time to my hometown

Mohamedkutty മുഹമ്മദുകുട്ടി said...

But I think it will be better to publish this type of articles in Malayalam rather than English.കുറച്ചു കൂടി കാര്യങ്ങള്‍ വിശദീകരിക്കാന്‍ അതാവും നല്ലത്.ഏതായാലും നമ്മുടെ മൊയ്ദീന്‍ നൈന ആളു കൊള്ളാം.രഹസ്യം മൂപ്പര്‍ സൂക്ഷിച്ചു വെച്ചിരിക്കയാണല്ലെ?പേറ്റന്റിനു ശ്രമിച്ചോ,ആവോ?

Muhammed Rafeeque said...

You have done a great job.

mazhamekhangal said...

vitamin is the only one vitamin .we fools

Ashish said...

Very informative post. Heard about this for the first time. Thanks.

Anonymous said...

In Penang, Malaysia, a nutmeg planter once show me the male and female fruit. I was told and shown a male nutmeg fruit has a cross lines on its bottom while the female fruit have only one line. Only the seed from a female fruit can grow i to a fruitful tree. Any one interested to verify this?