The productions of crop plants are mainly food, forage and cash crops. Its basic purpose is the development of crop cultivation systems that assure the production of high-performance plant. Plants exclude the red and brown algae, the fungi, archaea and bacteria. Green plants have cell walls with cellulose and characteristically obtain most of their energy from sunlight via photosynthesis by primary chloroplasts, derived from endosymbiosis with cyanobacteria. Green plants provide most of the world's molecular oxygen and are the basis of most of the earth's ecologies, especially on land. Plants that produce grains, fruits and vegetables form mankind's basic foodstuffs, and have been domesticated for millennia. A plant needs sunlight, carbon dioxide, minerals and water to make food. A green substance in plants called chlorophyll traps the energy from the sun needed to make food. In culinary terms, a vegetable is an edible plant or its part, intended for cooking or eating raw. Vegetables are most often consumed as salads or cooked in savory or salty dishes, while culinary fruits are usually sweet and used for desserts, but it is not the universal rule. Some vegetables can be consumed raw, while some, such as cassava, must be cooked to destroy certain natural toxins or microbes in order to be edible.
A spice is a dried seed, fruit, root, bark, or vegetable substance primarily used for flavoring, coloring or preserving food. Sometimes a spice is used to hide other flavors. Indian spices include a variety of spices grown across the Indian subcontinent . They blend food to extract the nutrients and bind them in a palatable form.
Medicinal plants have been identified and used throughout human history. Plants have the ability to synthesize a wide variety of chemical compounds that are used to perform important biological functions, and to defend against attack from predators such as insects, fungi and herbivorous mammals. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 80 percent of the population of some Asian and African countries presently uses herbal medicine for some aspect of primary health care.
Demand-driven exotic vegetables production is suitable for the farmers as they have assured market through contract with consumers. An exotic vegetable market is growing at the rate of 15 to 20% per annum is increasing day by day since India is importing more than 85% exotic vegetables.
India is the second largest producer of vegetables in the world, next to China. These are grown in about 6 million hectares forming 3% of the total cropped area. With the advancement in technology and the adoption of new techniques conducive to different soil and climate types, the vegetable production in the country is poised for growth in the foreseeable future.
India produced a total 5.9 million tons of spices in 2012/13, of which nearly 8 to 10 percent was exported to 150 countries. India accounts for nearly 45 to 50 percent of the spices traded around the world by volume. The Indian spice industry is divided. Production of spices in the country is a farming business and small farms will remain important in the near future.
Further information:
Cultivation of Tropical, Subtropical, Vegetables, Spices, Medicinal and Aromatic Plants describes the detailed information on subject. The major contents of this book are-classification of horticultural plants, soil and climatic requirements of horticultural plants, varietal wealth of horticultural crops, apathy, beet root, bottle gourd, brinjal, broccoli , capsicum, carrot, cauliflower, celery, chili, cucumber, curry leaf, drumstick, French bean, garlic, knol-khol, tools and equipment used in horticulture, post-harvest management of mushrooms etc.
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