It’s not bats, yet pineapple growers become restive

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: No fruits bats will dare to spread their wings in the prickly pineapple plantations. Yet, the pineapple industry in the state has been in the doldrums in the last couple of months with the prices of ripened pineapple nose-diving to around `8-10 per kg in the plantations.

Adding insult to the plummeting fortunes, the Nipah scare has made things worse for the growers with customers hailing mainly from the Malabar region turning their back on all types of fruits even during the Ramadan period.

According to the representatives of the pineapple growers in the central Kerala, the farmers are struggling to cope with the market glut after a 40-50 per cent rise in the natural flowering of pineapple ahead of the season and  the application of Ethephon, widely used to ripen fruits and regulate  plant growth, has resulted in its overproduction here in Kerala’s ‘pineapple capital’.

Baby John, executive director of Vazakulam Pineapple Growers and Processors’ Private Ltd, and  Pineapple Farmers’ Association former president, said the raw green pineapple being exported to the north Indian states has been fetching ` 28-30 per kg in the plantations while the farmers were forced to sell off the ripened fruits at the rate of Rs eight-10 per kg in the plantations.

The glut in the market had begun much ahead of the Nipah scare due to the rise in production and the Nipah scare made things worse with people choosing to stay indoors in the Malabar region in the last few weeks where the sale of fruits sale usually peaks during the Ramadan fasting, said Thomas Thannikkan,  Vazakulam Merchants’ Association president.

However, Agriculture Minister V S Sunilkumar made it clear the department has instructed  Horticorp and Vazhakulam Agro and Fruit Processing Company Ltd to procure  pineapple from the farmers and sell them through Horticorp outlets. As part of this, 126 tonnes of pineapple were procured and sold below the procurement price through the various Horticorp outlets, the minister said. Steps have also been initiated for making pineapple pulp with the help of the Agro and Fruit Processing Company.   But the traders and growers in the sector say  though the government’s intervention is a blessing for the farmers, it is not good enough to bailout the sector from the current crisis as the production is beyond the procurement scope of Horticorp.

The effective and easy way out from the crisis is the introduction of MD2 pineapple variety which has lot more shelf life than the current ‘Mauritius’ variety. Since the shelf life of MD2 is longer than ‘Mauritius’, the merchants and growers can export large quantities to foreign countries, said Baby John.

● In Kerala,  pineapple  is  cultivated in  an area of  around 40,000 acres  with  an average production  of 4 lakh tonnes per year.
● Around 80-85 per cent of its production is being sent to other states as raw green pineapple and around 15 per cent is domestically marketed as ripened fruits.
● The Mauritius variety of pineapple is now widely grown in Kerala
● The growers have been demanding the introduction of MD2 variety which has a longer shelf life compared to Mauritius