Pune: Thinking of Saffron dubbed the world's costliest spice brings to mind the eye-catching fields on either side of the highway cutting through Pampore town in Kashmir. The fields are a treat to watch as thousands of purple flowers sport red stigmas as swathes of land are lit in natural colours. Saffron adds unique colour and taste to any brew or food and its demand is always several times higher than the supply. People travel thousands of kilometres to see the Pampore fields and buy the spice which is almost unique to the valley.
A Pune-based youth, however, has brought those fields home. Shailesh Kishore Modak, 42, a former software engineer, originally from Nashik decided that it would be a profitable venture to grow saffron through container farming.
Shailesh, who has been living in Pune along with his family for the last 15 years, started the container-farming project around six years ago. He was confident of his success and to achieve the same, decided to use the aeroponics method of cultivation while experimenting with different crops.
Aeroponics is a method of growing plants without soil. Instead, roots are suspended in the air and irrigated with a nutrient-dense mist. This differs from hydroponic systems where plant roots are regularly submerged in a nutrient-rich solution.
Shailesh, who has a Master's degree in Computer Science, worked in a software company in Pune. He even got a job opportunity abroad, however, he resigned and took up a honeycombing course from Khadi Village Industry. Shailesh then took guidance from agriculturist Vikas Khaire and started learning how agriculture and modern technology can be effectively integrated.
Being aware of the challenges farmers face, Shailesh looked for alternatives to such issues. He experimented with container farming and found it to be successful. He started farming on 1 acre in 8x5 containers and raised various crops on this farm. Growing saffron, however, was always among his priorities.
Apart from India, saffron is cultivated in countries including Iran, Greece, Morocco, Spain, Italy, Turkey, France, Switzerland, and Pakistan. India contributes 5 percent of the world's total production of which 90 per cent is supplied only from its Jammu and Kashmir. In India, the production of saffron from J&K is 3.83 tonnes whereas its annual demand is approximately 100 tonnes.
Sensing the huge gap between production and demand, Shailesh travelled to Kashmir earlier this year to understand how this spice was grown. After getting acquainted with the process, Shailesh planted saffron tubers in several 8X5 inch containers at his container-farm in the Warje area of Pune. Initially, he ordered 12 kg of the saffron tuber from Pampore and planted them in containers in a controlled environment.
"When I saw that the saffron tubers were growing in the container, I again went to Kashmir and spoke to the saffron farmers about it. I use technologies such as air circulator, chiller, AC, dehumidifier, a charcoal-based technique to increase humidity and control the temperature in the container," said Shailesh.
Shailesh used 400 to 600 tubers to grow the spice as he invested around Rs 8 lakh on the project. He is hopeful of cultivating about 1.5 kg of saffron and has already produced and sold 1 kg of the costly spice directly to consumers at Rs 499 per gram.
