ITC Paperboards & Specialty Papers Division Unit: Bhadrachalam is one of the leading pulp and paper manufacturing companies in India. This ITCs unit is wood based and produces annually 2.3 lac tonnes of pulp and 5 lac tonnes of paperboard annually. The annual requirement of wood is nearly 9 lac tonnes. The wood demand is met by the farm forestry and social forestry plantations promoted by the company. When the mill was established in the year 1979, the government promised wood and bamboo from the forests, however, this arrangement was given up when the forest conservation act came into being.The company therefore, proactively embarked up on an ambitious farm and social forestry programme with a dual objective of achieving self-sufficiency on wood front as well as giving farmers an alternative land use options thereby, bringing in economic prosperity. ITC had devised this strategy  to commensurate wood consumption with pulpwood plantation and also to fulfill its social responsibility towards rural population through social and farm forestry plantations.

The programme was started in the year 1982.  First, seedling plantations of pulpwood species such as bamboo, eucalyptus, casuarina, subabul and acacia were promoted by the unit along with financial assistance through National Bank for Agricultural and Rural Development (NABARD). The actual clonal forestry programme started in the year 1989 and the first clonal plantations appeared on the horizon in India in the year 1992.The clones were evolved through tree improvement programme combining the knowledge of genetics and silviculture.

Clonal forestry and R&D
In the start of the programme (1982 – 1986), the company distributed 22.07 million seedlings and covered an area of 9441 ha with bamboo, eucalyptus, subabul, casuarina and acacia species. Poly bag nurseries were started and the plants were distributed to the farmers of 8 districts of Andhra Pradesh. These plantations were referred to as seed route plantations.The productivity of seed route plantations was 6 to 10 MT per ha per year (1.e. 42 to 60 MT wood in 7 years period) which was very low and uneconomical to the farmer. The tree improvement programme was launched in the year 1989 to improve productivity and profitability of plantations for making farm forestry an attractive land use option to the farmer. Under this programme high yielding, disease, wind, drought resistant and site specific clones were developed and marketed as “ITC Bhadrachalam Clones”.