At the heart of this comprehensive greening project is ITC’s state-of-art research centre, consistently striving for productivity improvement of several tree species in order to give attractive land-use alternatives to traditional farmers

and wasteland owners. So far 86 high-yielding, fast-growing and disease-resistant ‘Bhadrachalam’ clones have

been produced on a commercial scale with productivity that is 6-9 times that of the normal seedlings. Included in these are 23 site-specific clones adapted to problematic alkaline and saline soils. In the pipeline are research projects on casuarina, subabul, rain-fed bamboo and sustainable agro-forestry models.

Apart from the obvious benefits of increasing the forest cover, this effort also directly contributes to in-situ moisture conservation, groundwater recharge and significant reduction in top-soil losses due to wind and water erosion. With poor households having access to their own woody biomass under ITC’s social forestry programme, they can meet most of their fuelwood requirements in-house through loppings and toppings, thus further reducing

pressure on public forests. As a result of the leaf-litter from multi-species plantations and the promotion of leguminous inter-crops, depleted soils are constantly enriched. Soon this will lead to a decline in fertiliser and pesticide consumption, thus reducing the pollution of groundwater sources by such chemicals.