Establishment of Orchards and Fruit Nurseries across Gilgit-Baltistan

In the first quarter of 2019, ETI-GB established 501 orchards and 25 fruit nurseries across Gilgit-Baltistan. The private nurseries were established with an objective to supply true-to-type, high-yield and disease-free plants to the farming community of Gilgit-Baltistan. Moreover, each nursery has a capacity of producing 3500 true-to-type disease-free plants every year.

In addition to Fruit nurseries, 501 apricot orchards were also established in all 10 Districts of Gilgit –Baltistan with an objective to transform traditional apricot production system into commercial orchards. The main idea behind the establishment of commercial orchards is to meet current market demand of apricots, to ensure economy of scale, production of uniform apricot varieties and improve bargaining power of apricot growing farmers in the region.

Over the years, fruit farming in GB has emerged as one of the potential sectors in accelerating the growth of rural economy and this intervention of ETI-GB will benefit fruit growing farmers of the region and will ultimately increase their income.

A comprehensive and transparent mechanism was developed by ETI-GB to identify beneficiary farmers for the establishment of Fruit Nurseries and Orchards whereby an Expression of Interest (EOI) was floated in local newspaper and received more than six hundred applications of farmers, farmer groups , enterprises from 10 Districts of Gilgit-Baltistan. The applicants were selected on the basis of preset criteria that includes stability of land, fertility status, availability of irrigation water, road access to the proposed site etc.

After comprehensive scrutiny and site visits by technical experts, ETI-GB signed MoUs with sucessful beneficiary farmers and implemented the project across Gilgit-Baltistan.

District wise details of Nurseries and Orchards: