The facility, which will be a farm spread over 50-100 acres, will be the third such of the company after the ones in Jalgaon in Maharashtra and Udumalpet in Tamil Nadu.
P Soman, senior vice-president, projects, said the company will conduct field research on cultivating apple and other fruits and vegetables using drip irrigation at the facility, which will be operational next year.
Anil Jain, managing director, said the company is in talks with the state government to acquire the land needed for the facility.
The company will this year spend about Rs 10 crore on land acquisition, training centres, etc. “We will decide as we go along how much more we need to spend,” he said.
Jain Irrigation has lined up a capital expenditure of Rs 400 crore this year, of which about Rs 30-35 crore is for research and development.
Jain Irrigation, which is headquartered in Jalgaon, has over 1,000 acres of farms and a research laboratory there. In Udumalpet, where it conducts field research on micro irrigation for mango, coconut and now paddy, among others, it has nearly 1,200 acres.
MIS is divided into drip and sprinkler irrigation.
The company recently began trials for cultivating paddy through drip irrigation in Udumalpet, which results in water and power savings of 60% and 50%, respectively.
Paddy is traditionally grown in standing water using flood irrigation.
Other than MIS, the company also makes pipes and processes fruits and vegetables such as mango, guava, tomato and onion. It claims to be the largest mango pulp producer in the world.
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