Castorseed oil is used for medicinal, lighting, lubricating and industrial purposes. Its oil cake is used as manure. Its leaves are fed to era silk-worms.
Castorseed grows well in warm and relatively dry climate. It requires 50-75 cm of annual rainfall and red sandy loam (Peninsular India) to light alluvial soils (Great Plains). As a Kharif crop it is sown between June-July and harvested between Novembers to January. The crop is generally mixed with cotton, jowar, turn and sesamum etc.
Area and Production
The average per hectare yield of castor seed in India is 818 kg/ha which has depicted about 4 times increase between 1950-51 and 2000-01. Amongst states Gujarat records the highest per hectare yield (1393 kg/ha) while Maharashtra has the lowest per hectare yield (221 kg/ha).
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There has been 94.4 per cent and 740.7 per cent rise in the area and production of the crop between 1950-51 and 2000-01. India is the second largest producer (production 27 per cent) of castor seed in the world after Brazil. Two states of Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh contribute 80.17 per cent of the total area and 85.98 per cent of total production of castor seed of the country. Gujarat
Gujarat has virtual monopaly in the area (41.37 percent) and production (66.12 percent) of castor seed in the country. Here Mehsana, Kheda, Sabarkantha, and Kachchh districts contribute over 60 per cent of the state’s output of castor seeds.
Andhra Pradesh
Andhra Pradesh with 38.80 per cent of the country’s castorseed area provides 19.86 per cent of the total output of the crop in the country. Most of the state’s production comes from Nalgonda, Mahbubnagar, Hyderabad, Warangal, Prakasam and Rangareddi districts. Rajasthan
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Other minor producers of castor seed include Karnataka (Hassan, Chitradurga.Tumkur, Bangalore and Mysore districts), Tamil Nadu (Salem, and Dharmapuri districts), Orissa (Koraput and Kalahandi districts), Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar (Saran, MungerandBhagalpurdistricts), and Assam states.
Trade
About 70 per cent of the total production of castor-seed is used for extracting oil. About 15 per cent of the total production is exported to the U.K., U.S.A., France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Germany etc. Recently castor-seed oil has replaced the seed as an item of export.