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• 02 / 12 / 2010

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"The beauty of a people should be measured by the greatness of its men", and Viñales has managed to surpass that, since it has not only been painted with the accuracy of a creative paintbrush, but also by its men, who get together to achieve such similarity.

Native of this land, are those people nationally and internationally renowned, like "Benito el Viñalero" and Ramon Vazquez, meanwhile others like Julio Martínez González, walk in silence leaving a trail of fruit trees as footprint.

From the seed...a light in the darkness

His parents' dedication to work the land and his early approach to this job as an excuse to help, were the first steps of a vocation that was unconsciously emerging, and then marked his decision to study Agronomy becoming an engineer of the sector.

Today, thanks to his knowledge, has become a teacher and coordinator of the Agronomy Engineering career in the University headquarters in Viñales.

This municipality counts on very few compact areas dedicated to fruit production, and this has become a critical situation, since the hurricanes of the recent seasons destroyed and damaged about 75 % of the existing trees.

Julio's ingenuity showed up through a project aimed at spreading this kind of food to communities, by the production of short scale fruit seedlings improved with grafts, developed in an 80 square meter yard as a trial, using local resources from January 2006 to March 2009.

Shoulders to the wheel!

"The species on experiment are avocado, mango, guava, mamey and citrics, all of them in small amounts. All of the patterns were obtained from botanical seeds and the compost was extracted from the very yard.

What kind of grafting did you used?

We worked so that the patterns were ready for grafting with enough time to plant them after June 21, day when the forest workers start planting; since the weather begins to improve from that month and it favors the survival and development of the seedlings.

"The grafts vary in accordance to the fruit, lateral thorn (avocado), inverted T (citric), the little horse (guava), without using stimulants".

Could you talk about results already?

"We managed to obtain 68 % of 746 grafts", if it had been made in the best stage, the results would have been better; besides 55 families, not only from the neighbourhood, but from other places and even municipalities, have been benefited with improved fruits coming from the little nursery.

Despite these results that encourage him to continue to do this job, he is not totally satisfied, "it is necessary that the entities of the Agriculture Ministry fulfil the promises stated for the project, providing the resources and extending it to other Popular Councils".

The joy of the work he carries out gives a special glow to his eyes when stating what he felt in each graft, "is like becoming a parent again", one of phrases that live in a man worried about his town and who looks for solutions before the climate problems that affect our country, the hurricanes.

Source: guerrillero