India, June 12 -- Work has begun on setting up three state-of-the-art clean plant centres in Maharashtra-part of the Union government's initiative to provide virus-free, high-quality planting material to fruit growers. The centres, proposed in Pune (grape), Nagpur (orange), and Solapur (pomegranate), are being developed under a Rs.300-crore allocation announced by Union agriculture minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan during his visit to Pune on June 3.

The project has started in coordination with central and state agencies.

A senior secretary-level official said on condition of anonymity, "Farmers often struggle to access reliable planting material and are sometimes cheated with substandard saplings. The centres aim to address the gap by ens...