The State Government has decided to establish 112 new cold storages under the Potao Mission in order to create additional storage capacity to 5.60 lakh metric tonne.
The mission authorities are believed to be in touch with the investors and bankers for the purpose.
Chief Secretary AP Padhi recently took stock of the activities of the mission, which is aimed at increasing potato production, storage capacity and seed production.
While the State’s current production now stands at 2.78 lMT, the mission has targeted to increase the production to 11 lMT by March 2018 to meet the State’s requirement.
An assessment carried out by the National Centre For Cold Chain Development (NCCD) and Nabard Consultancy Services (NABCONS), the cold store capacity requirement for the State is now 2.88 lakh MT. In April 2015, when the Potato Mission was launched, cold store capacity was 1.33 lMT with 27 functional cold storages.
About 15 new cold storages would be operational by March, 2017.
With this, the total number of functional cold storages will increase to 42.
Meanwhile, an analysis of cold storage facilities revealed that nearly 60 per cent of capacity is being utilized round the year involving all the commodities.
Taking this into account, the Government has taken up the matter of establishment of new cold storages to ensure synergy between production and storage, said a senior official in Department of Agriculture and Farmers’ Empowerment.
It was revealed that private players are being roped in to step up seeds production units as Odisha is a deficit State both in potato and potato seeds.
The interested private players would be provided land for seed production and similar steps are being taken up to set up a tissue culture laboratory near the capital city, officials said.