India’s largest airport nursery inaugurated on World Environment Day

On the occasion of World Environment Day, Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL), a GMR Group led consortium, announced the opening of India’s largest airport nursery in the vicinity of Delhi Airport. This act reflects the airport’s pledge to provide world-class facilities to its passengers along with ensuring the sustainability of the ecosystem.

Spread across more than 400,000 Sq. feet area, this endeavor is also referred to as North India’s largest hi-tech plant nursery. Each plantation season at the nursery will have lakhs of air-purifying plants which will help cut down the carbon-footprint and maintain the highest standards of air quality levels in the airport vicinity. The nursery houses more than 1.16 Lakh indoor plants variety with some exotic plants brought from Thailand and Indonesia. Delhi Airport propagates more than one lakh flowering and foliage plants at its in-house nursery, which includes about 40,000 chrysanthemums and more than 60,000 potted seasonal flowers propagation every year. And, this makes DIAL the only airport entity that extensively grows a large variety of flowers at its nursery. Adding to the benefit of creating a green and pollution-free zone in and around the airport, the plants from the nursery also provide for picturesque attractions for passengers. More than 60 plant species grown at the nursery are aesthetically displayed in Passenger Terminal Buildings (PTBS) and other associated areas of the airport. In Terminal 3 alone, more than 30,000 plants are displayed, which are periodically replaced with fresh plants from the nursery.

Commenting on the development, Mr. Videh Kumar Jaipuriar, CEO-DIAL, said: “It gives me immense pleasure to announce the opening of India’s largest airport nursery on the occasion of World Environment Day 2020, the theme of which is Celebrate Biodiversity. DIAL not only provides world-class amenities and facilities to the flyers but also creates healthy and safe avenues for its passengers at Delhi Airport, which is the first Airport in the Asia Pacific to be Carbon Neutral. We are focused on preserving the pollution-free ecosystem at Delhi Airport. In this regard, we have created a huge green zone inside and outside the airport terminals and planted several air-purifying trees and plants. The new nursery would not only contribute to improving the air quality in and around Delhi airport but also add to its aesthetic appeal.”

To ensure the favorable growth of all existing plants, the temperature and humidity inside the nursery are managed by a digitally controlled cooling fan & pad system supplemented with automatic fogging and irrigation systems. All of this goes in sync with the weather conditions outside which is closely being monitored by the Horticulture team of the organization.  Apart from this, DIAL has developed two net-houses (100,000 sq. feet) along with modular sprinklers and foggers, covered with aluminate and two poly houses (2690 sq mt) with dual coverage of five-layered special polyethylene sheet and aluminate.