Mr. Narayana Pillai, Vembanad, of Chettikulangara Panchayath, is a progressive farmer. In his 3.5 ha coconut garden he cultivates 200 coconut trees along with a wide variety of intercrops like banana, vegetables, tuber crops, spices, fruit crops etc. throughout the year to increase income. He was one among the partners in the Front Line Demonstration (FLD) programme on ‘Introduction of high yielding chilly variety “Samrudhi”, as an intercrop in coconut gardens’. Mr. Narayana Pillai cultivated the samrudhi variety in 5 cents (150 plants) during 2011. On every harvest the crop yielded around 10 kg fresh chillies and every fourth day he harvests chillies. There was a mild attack of leaf curl and he adopted eco friendly pest management practices. The chillies, priced around Rs. 100/kg, were marketed in the local markets. He was very much satisfied with the performance of the chilly variety as the pungency and quality of the variety is better than that of the local chilly variety. He has been producing seeds and seedlings of the variety and providing to farmers on request through KVK linkage. A popular article on the success story was published in Kerala Karshakan.
