Strawberry research center to be set up at Mahabaleshwar : CM Uddhav Thackeray
Satara, Feb 1, 2020 : Stating that Mahabaleshwar was home for Strawberry as well as Honey and other forest produce, Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Saturday asked the officials from agriculture department to submit a proposal to start a research center to ensure cultivation of strawberry in state as well as country. He was speaking during a meeting at Raj Bhavan which discussed threadbare tourism in Mahabaleshwar.
Chief Minister Thackeray said, with best research strawberry production as well as quality would increase and we need to give stress so that strawberry can be cultivated in other parts of the state. Since, Mahabaleshwar was popular tourism destination, chief minister said that number of tourists is big and for mitigating the problem of number of vehicles setting up big parking lots outside Mahabaleshwar and use of electric vehicles needs to explored.
Chief Minister said that, in addition to Mahabaleshwar, there is a need to develop tourism places in and around this place and he directed the tourism department officials in this regard. He told them that the Mantrala would sanction such proposals in a time bound manner.
Tourism Minister Aaditya Thackeray said that efforts need to be made to produce excellent quality Strawberry cream and avail the market for the same. He said that Mahabaleshwar gets tourists from not only Maharashtra but from all over the country and from abroad as well and he suggested that it would be helpful if multilingual police force is deployed at this place.
Industries Minister Subhash Desai, Collector Shekhar Singh, Kolhapur range Chief Conservator Dr Ben Clement, SP Tejashree Satpute, MTDC Managing Director Abhimanyu Kale were present for the meeting.
