Searching several varieties of jackfruits across other villages, collecting their seeds if he felt it is rare and planting them in empty plots along the roadside in the village, KR Jayan, well known as Plavu Jayan, planted about 20,000 jackfruit saplings in his hometown, Irinjalakkuda.
He was known as Plavu Jayan right from his school days. Though the name was used to rebuke him, Jayan made it to a proud title years after.
There was a time when his family had to survive only on jackfruit while the village was dipped in poverty. It made Jayan to present an academic project on jackfruit in the school time. But, his schoolmates gave him the name as ‘Plavu Vijayan’ to make fun of him. Plavu in Malayalam means jackfruit tree.
It is not a matter of number of trees he seeded; instead he planted more over 44 varieties of jackfruit and possibly saved many species from endangerment within 2 decades.
It includes Thamara Chakka, Kashumanga Chakka, Padavalam Varikka, Athimadhuram Koozha, Padavalam Varikka, etc. The seeds he collected from various places are developed to saplings at 12-cents (0.12 acre) land.
KR Jayan took auto rickshaw driving as profession after he came back from West Asia in 1995. He was selling goods like candles, soaps, incense sticks and other products from Kudumbasree in Thrissur town. Along the way of his selling, plants trees on the roadside and rised up even the sweet- fruit tree in public spaces such as Shoranur Railway Junction, Thrissur Government Medical College and Chittur Government College.
He does not follow vegetative propagation techniques such as budding and grafting for his plavu. He stems only in the natural and organic way for planting and thinks it can then live upto 100 years long, whereas the grafted plants might have a lifespan of 8 or 10 years.
He created a gram near the river in Shoranur village in Palakkad district and now he is at his fourth bid for jack fruit village at Velukara in Thrissur.
The nature- lover and jack fruit savior was awarded with Plant Genome Saviour Community Award by the government of India in 2019. It is important to mention that he wrote two books about his passion on jack fruit, titled as ‘Plavu’ and ‘Plavu Aur Main, which are now use for teaching the importance of jackfruit in schools.
