Alphonso dear? Love other mangoes | India News

We are at the beginning of the end of the mango season, and some sour notes in India’s passionate affair with its fruity sweetheart are evident. Maharashtra’s Alphonsos were even less affordable than usual, UP’s Dussehris were dearer, Gujarat’s Kesar and Bengal’s Kohinoor were noticeably costlier, Bihar’s Jardalu, cases of which are sent by the state government to Delhi’s political VVIPs each year, were disappointingly smaller.
Were you to map India by its 1,500-plus varieties of mangoes, the bitter fact is that bad news by price and size will show up across the country. But, of course, and as that witticism ascribed to British economist Joan Robinson has it, whatever’s true in India, the opposite is also true.
So, output was bountiful in Bengal and much of the South. Prices in Bengal for some varieties were as low as Rs 10 per kg, and for Karnataka’s Totapuri, prices crashed to Rs 25 per kg.
In uncertain times, say finance boffins, spread your risks. With erratic climate bound to hit some mango crop or the other, we should perhaps spread our love for the fruit across varieties that don’t capture the national imagination as yet.
Have you bit into the only Indian mangoes that ripen by January? Kerala’s Muthalamada – aka ‘Mango City’ – cultivates mangoes that are ready for your plate at the height of winter, a distinction it shares only with the Latin American mangogrowing countries of Peru and Bolivia. Among Muthalamada’s varieties is what growers call the Alphonso of the South, which this year fetched Rs 250-Rs 350 per kg. Not cheap – some mango varieties including well-liked Himsagar and Langda from Bengal retailed at Rs 50/60 per kg – but a bargain compared with the Rs 2,000 per dozen for Alphonsos this season.
Karnataka’s Badami and Tamil Nadu’s Malgova also lay claim to be the Alphonsos of the South. Bengal’s Murshidabad, the state’s Mango Central, hosts a dazzling variety of the fruit – Kohitur, Rani Pasand, Sarenga, Bimli, Anaras, Chandankosa. Growers say local conditions produce a combination of texture and flavour that cannot be replicated in other regions, even if the same varieties are planted.
If mango branding is partly about the stories around the variety – Alphonso is the best example – some of Murshidabad’s mangoes may be brands waiting to be built. Kohitur, for example, is supposed to be so delicate that each fruit needs a cotton cushion during harvesting and storing. It was also supposed to have been the favourite of Nawab Sirajud-Daulah, Bengal’s last independent minor royal, who, as the legend goes, valiantly fought the East India Company but was defeated by betrayal from within his ranks.
Red is a prized colour for mangoes. The famous and super-pricey Miyazaki is red. So is UP’s Shreshtha, which retails at Rs 600 per kg. Equally prized is UP’s Husn-e-Ara, with its red and yellow colours. A mango that looks like a Kashmiri apple is a mango that can travel far outside its growing zone.
Further east, Assam, not a state that comes to mind when you think mangoes, is determined to market its version of India’s most-loved fruit. New varieties with distinctly local names, which may charm the big city well-heeled mango consumer, are Assam’s bet. The state wants Senduri, Keturi, Mati-Mitha, Tenga, Lisu to become mangoes that India wants.
The broader story here is that the market for mangoes is dominated by a fewcommercially successful varieties and when bad weather hits some of them, the retail end is hit by price shocks. This year’s experience should tell growers, middlemen and consumers that it’s time to welcome some of the many local varieties that India produces. But it’s not going to be easy.
“The dominance of grafted commercial varieties has left little space for rare mango varieties from Malihabad, Barabanki, and Sitapur,” says former director, ICAR-CISH, Shailendra Rajan, who has worked extensively with mango growers in Malihabad, UP, and also outside UP. Malihabad, the UP region most rich in mango varieties, is now facing the risk of losing its 200-yearold varietal wealth, warns Rajan.
With variations, this is a story that’s true across India, and one of the missing links is that many of these varieties need much more care and attention – many local mango crops don’t survive, says a UP mango grower, Upendra Singh, who has named a mango variety after Narendra Modi. Shreshtha, UP’s much soughtafter red mango, is hard to get, for example. If India’s mango plate is to go beyond the usual top sellers, the supply question has to be solved.
The key to this is bettermanaged orchards. But as a study of some mango orchards by agricultural economists in UP pointed out, poor technical knowhow and poor access to credit are major constraints. Also, mango orchards give the highest returns after 11-15 years of the first planting, and returns decline thereafter. That’s a big problem for many of India’s mango growers. Climate and farm economics are challenges for India’s mango future. But it’s not unreasonable to be an optimist. This is a country after all where mangoes can flourish anywhere. Take Kannapuram village in Kerala’s Kannur, which boasts 120 mango varieties. And a study found that there were 382 mango trees hosting 102 varieties, all within a 300 sq. m. radius. Or take UP’s Wonder Orchard, which among its many varieties also grows mangoes originally cultivated in Florida and South Africa – named, respectively, Tommy Atkins and Sensation.
As in so many other important things in life, the key to mango’s future in India lies in celebrating its joyous diversity.
Indians will never not love mangoes – it’s just that they should learn to love many more varieties of them.
With inputs from Neha Shukla, R Ramesh, Kumar Rajesh, Kangkan Kalita, Sandip Mishra, Jaideep Deogharia, Venu Lanka, Nalla Babu, Nida Sayed, Niranajan Kaggere, Krishnendu Bandyopadhyay, and Udit P Mukherjee
Choice of Kings and Courtiers
Babur, the first of the Great Mughals, didn’t like India and was homesick right from the time of his conquest. However, even he conceded in the Baburnama that “When the mango is good, it is really good… In fact, the mango is the best fruit of Hindustan.”
His great-grandson Jahangir loved mangoes without riders. In his autobiography, the Tuzuki-Jahangiri, he writes, “Notwithstanding the sweetness of the Kabul fruits, not one of them has, to my taste, the flavour of the mango.”
The love for mangoes continued to the end of the Mughal dynasty. In fact, the last Mughal, Bahadur Shah Zafar, almost died from an excess of mangoes in 1853. Percival Spear, in his ‘History of Delhi Under the Later Mughals’, says Zafar “suffered from that amiable weakness of Babur Ghalibnorthern India, a fondness for mangoes. It was a mixture of mangoes and red pepper which brought on his first attack of colic, and more mangoes sent by the (British) Resident…nearly killed him.”
Zafar, who was a poet, had in fact written a couplet in honour of the Resident’s mangoes before eating them.
Zafar’s contemporary and Delhi’s most famous poet, Mirza Ghalib, was also a mango aficionado. In ‘The Last Mughal’, William Dalrymple shares one of Ghalib’s many mango anecdotes. “At one gathering, a group of Delhi intellectuals were discussing what qualities a good mango should have : ‘In my view,’ said Ghalib, ‘there are only two essential points about mangoes – they should be sweet and they should be plentiful.’”