THE IMPACT OF HARVESTING COCONUTS AT MONTHLY INTERVALS

From the time immemorial coconut bunches were harvested at two monthly intervals. In general two such bunches are harvested at a given harvest. However on the average a coconut bunch matures more or less every month. If these could be harvested at monthly intervals without any adverse effect on the nuts there will be several benefits. These are availability of nuts over the months, savings on mature nut fall which otherwise would have lost, steady monthly income to the pickers and thereby reducing the risk of extension of skilled pickers. There was however no information about the nature of impact monthly harvesting has on the production of yield. In order to address on this issue three long term experiments were conducted at three different agro climatic zones, to study the impact of monthly harvesting on yield as compared to two monthly harvesting. One experiment ran over a period of 10 years, while the other two over a period of five years. Overall results were promising, by way of, increased nuts, quality of copra unaffected, mature nut fall reduced to a bear minimum and substantive gain in income to the pickers who play a vital role in the production of coconut, for harvesting coconuts at monthly intervals.