The global numero uno in neem plantation, India will soon find it tough to compete with China in this sector as the dragon land is emerging as a major neem power slowly.

Although India has the largest number of neem trees in the world - around 22 million - the scenario is likely to change soon.

In the last five years, China has planted 20,000 million neem trees, though it took up the plantation on a commercial scale only in 1999.

China has chalked out big projects for 15 years from 2006-2020.

Yamping Zhang of the Research Institute of Resource Insects of Chinese Academy of Forestry, who was in New Delhi recently, told Commodity Online that China is targeting for 27,000 hectametres raw material plantation with an output of 80,000 tonne of seeds and 16,000 tonne of leaves.

"We plan to set up ten processing factories producing 20,000 tonne of neem-based pesticides annually which is likely to benefit approximately 80,000 people from 16,000 families," he said.

Large-scale neem plantation was taken up by China when it found that the tree was useful in checking soil erosion and subsistence problem faced by the arid areas of the country.