Development and Maintenance of Orchard Cum Horti Nurseries, Meghalaya

What is the Development and Maintenance of Orchard Cum Horti Nurseries scheme?

Development and Maintenance of Orchard Cum Horti Nurseries is a horticulture scheme of the Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare Department, Government of Meghalaya, run by the Directorate of Horticulture. In the department's Farmers Friendly Schemes booklet the objective is stated as being "for production and multiplication of good, high yielding, diseased free planting materials in the Government farms for distribution to farmers through District Horticulture Officer".

The scheme has two halves that are easy to confuse. One half is what the department does on its own land: maintain orchards and nurseries on government farms, keep mother plants healthy, and multiply grafts, cuttings and seedlings. The other half is what a farmer receives: the resulting planting material, plus the training and extension that goes with it. The scheme's name describes the first half; the benefit sits in the second.

What the department publishes as the pattern of assistance

• Training for farmers on nursery and orchard practice.
• Awareness programmes and extension support.
• Technology support.
• Subsidy on inputs, which appears in one of the department's two entries for this scheme.

What the department publishes as the entitlement

• Production and multiplication of good, high yielding, disease-free planting materials for sale and free distribution.
• Introduction of new high yielding varieties of mother plants suitable to the different areas of the State.

That last point carries more weight than it looks. Meghalaya spans altitudes and rainfall regimes that differ sharply between the Garo Hills, the Khasi Hills and the Jaintia Hills, and a variety that performs at one elevation may fail at another. Maintaining mother plants matched to each area is what allows the department to issue material that will actually survive where the farmer plants it.

Why nursery quality decides an orchard's fate. A fruit tree is a decision a farmer lives with for a decade or more. A graft that is not true to type, or that carries a virus from the parent block, cannot be corrected later, the whole orchard has to come out. Buying a sapling from an unverified source is therefore one of the highest-risk purchases a smallholder makes, and a government nursery with maintained mother blocks exists precisely to remove that risk.

Who is eligible for the Orchard Cum Horti Nurseries scheme?

You can apply if:

• You are a bona fide farmer engaged in agriculture in Meghalaya.
• You possess own or leased land of at least 200 square metres. This is the scheme's published eligibility criterion and it is deliberately low to 200 square metres is a fifth of a bigha in many reckonings, enough for a homestead orchard rather than a commercial block. Leased land counts, which matters in a state where clan and community land arrangements are widespread.
• You approach the horticulture wing of the department.

You cannot apply, or are not eligible, if:

• You hold less than 200 square metres of own or leased land.
• You are not a bona fide farmer engaged in agriculture.
• You are a commercial nursery or trader buying stock for resale. Nursery dealership is a separately licensed activity.
• You are seeking a grant to build your own nursery, greenhouse or polyhouse. That is a different line of the department's work — the citizen charter lists construction of horticulture nurseries, greenhouses, polyhouses and shadehouses as a distinct business, and the Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture carries its own assistance for protected cultivation.
• You are outside Meghalaya, as distribution runs through the state's own District Horticulture Officers.

No income ceiling, age limit or category condition is notified. The stated mode of selection is bona fide farmers on a first come first serve basis.

What documents are required?

How to apply for planting material under this scheme

1. Check your holding against the 200 square metre threshold and gather the land record or lease document. This is the only numeric criterion the scheme publishes and it is checked first.
2. Decide the crop, variety and number of plants, and match it to your site. Ask the Horticulture Development Officer which varieties the department is maintaining as mother plants for your altitude and area, since the scheme explicitly aims at varieties suitable to the different areas of the state.
3. Write a plain-paper application. The citizen charter allows plain paper where a prescribed form is not available, and prescribed forms are downloadable from megagriculture.gov.in. State your name, village, block, land area and the indent.
4. Submit it to the Horticulture Development Officer (HDO) of your CD Block, there are 39 blocks, or of your Horticulture Circle, of which the department operates 6. This is the route the scheme's own description specifies.
5. Follow up with the District Horticulture Officer. The scheme names the DHO as the channel through which government-farm material reaches farmers, and the department also lists the Sectoral Officer, Department of Horticulture as a contact point for this scheme.
6. Collect the material in the planting window, pay the issue rate where the material is on sale, keep the receipt, and plant promptly. Grafts and saplings deteriorate quickly once lifted.

Office hours at the District Horticulture Officer and other contact points are 10.00 AM to 5.00 PM in summer and 10.00 AM to 4.30 PM in winter.

Is the planting material free or paid?

The department's two entries for this scheme differ slightly and both should be read. One records the entitlement as production and multiplication of planting material "for sale"; the other records it as "for sale and free distribution" and adds subsidy on inputs to the pattern of assistance.

In practice this means the rate is set crop by crop and season by season, and no single statewide figure has been published for this scheme. Do not assume free supply, and do not assume a fixed subsidy percentage. Ask the District Horticulture Officer for the current issue rate for the specific crop and variety before you plan an area. Free distribution, where it happens, is typically tied to demonstration or a specific programme rather than being available on demand.

How to check the status of your application

The scheme has no online tracker. Check in this order:

1. Ask the Horticulture Development Officer whether your indent has been booked for the season and for what quantity.
2. Ask the District Horticulture Officer which government farm the allotment is drawn from and the expected lifting date.
3. Escalate to the Sectoral Officer, Department of Horticulture, or to the Director of Horticulture, Cleve Colony, Government Fruit Garden, Shillong-793 003, on (0364) 2227464, email hort-meg@nic.in.
4. For general horticulture advice, call the Kisan Call Centre on 1800-180-1551, free, from 6.00 AM to 10.00 PM daily including Sunday.

Why indents for nursery material fail

• Holding below 200 square metres, which fails the scheme's stated criterion.
• No land proof attached, so the officer cannot verify the threshold.
• Applied to the agriculture wing rather than the horticulture wing, which is the most common procedural error.
• Applied outside the planting window. Grafts and saplings are lifted seasonally and cannot be held indefinitely at the farm.
• Nursery stock exhausted, since selection is first come first serve and a government farm's output for a season is finite.
• Variety not maintained for your area. If no mother block for the variety you want is maintained at an altitude comparable to your land, the department will offer an alternative rather than issue material likely to fail.
• Indent out of proportion to the declared area, which the receiving officer will query before forwarding.

Grievance route

The Department of Agriculture's citizen charter gives three options. Grievances may be submitted in writing to the concerned District Agricultural Officer during office hours, or directly to the Director of Agriculture or the Director of Horticulture at the Shillong headquarters. For this horticulture scheme the Director of Horticulture on (0364) 2227464, email hort-meg@nic.in, is the right addressee. Online grievances go to the state government's grievance portal at mii.nic.in.

No fee is payable to apply under this scheme. Where planting material is sold, the only legitimate payment is the issue rate charged by the District Horticulture Officer or Implementing Officer, and it should always be against a receipt.