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Agriculture | Small sweet success -Kumar Sambhav Shrivastava

Small sweet success -Kumar Sambhav Shrivastava

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published Published on Jul 23, 2015   modified Modified on Jul 23, 2015
-Down to Earth

Srihari kurade proudly walks through his orchard of kokum (Garciniaindica), a wild fruit that is famous for its therapeutic properties. With more than 2,400 trees spread over seven hectares (ha) of land, his orchard in South Goa is the world’s largest kokum plantation. Kurade is also perhaps the only farmer in the region to have taken up systematic large-scale plantation of the fruit that is endemic to the Western Ghats. Almost every part of the sweet and tangy fruit has some medicinal or industrial use (see ‘A healthy option’).

Still close to 85 per cent of the fruit used to go waste every year till 2010, according to a survey conducted by Goa non-profit the Western Ghats Kokum Foundation (WGKF). The survey says that the fruit is cultivated in small plantations in North Karnataka, Goa, southern Maharashtra and parts of Kerala and the collective acreage under itis not more than 1,000 ha in the Konkan region. However, WGKF, and other local groups, are now trying to rewrite the story of the healthy fruit.

The primary reason farmers shy away from growing kokum is that it clashes with mango harvest. “Mango has a lucrative market unlike kokum. Besides, this tree is mainly found in deep forests making transportation difficult. Thus most of the fruits go waste,” says Miguel Braganza, joint secretary of WGKF. Though kokum has been popular as a traditional medicine, it was widely used only in kitchens as a culinary item till about 2000, says Ajit Shirodkar, chairperson of WGKF.

The harvest season and the shelf-life of the fruit are very short. “The harvest season of kokum is between the second week of May and the end of the month. Once the rains start in the first week of June, even the plucked fruits start to decay. As a result, farmers are forced to sell them,” says Shirodkar.

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Down to Earth, 5 July, 2015

Down to Earth, 5 July, 2015, http://www.downtoearth.org.in/coverage/small-sweet-success-50402


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