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HISTORY OF GUAR &
PRODUCTION
The Guar plant 'Cyamopis
Tetragonalobus', is an annual plant. The legume is an important source
of nutrition to animals and humans, it regenerates soil nitrogen and
the endosperm of guar seed is an important hydrocolloid widely used
across a broad spectrum of industries.
The 'Guar' legume plant is extremely drought resistant and thrives
in semiarid regions where most plants perish. It grows best in sandy
soils and areas of West, North-West India and parts of Pakistan are
the ideal places for its farming. Jodhpur city in the North-Western
state of Rajasthan in India is the most important and ideal processing
centre for Guargum and contributes about 40% of the world's Guargum
supply.
Guar requires reasonably warm weather and a growing season of 14 to
16 weeks. It needs moderate intermittent rainfall with lot of
sunshine. Too much precipitation can cause the plant to become more'
leafy' thereby reducing the number of pods and / or the number of
seeds per pod which affects the size and yield of seeds. The crop is
generally sown after the monsoon rainfall in second half of july /
early August and is harvested in late October / early November.
The Guar is a natural rain fed crop and the total size of Guar crop
varies from year to year depending upon monsoon rainfall.
In India, the
tender green Guar is also used as a vegetable and cattle feed. A sever
locust bean gum shortage, just after the second world war, adversely
affected the paper and textile industries. Guargum was found to be the
most suitable substitute for scarce locust bean gum. The technology of
Guargum extraction was commercialised in 1953 in USA and after about a
decade in India. After harvesting, when the pods become dry through
sunlight, they are beaten off and during the process, the seeds come
out of them.
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