LUCKNOW: Uttar Pradesh's Haji Kalimullah Khan, who is popularly known as India's 'Mango Man', has developed two varieties of mango and has dedicated them to ‘corona warriors’ of the country.
Khan developed the two varieties of ‘dussehri’ mango and named them as ‘police aam’ and ‘doctor aam’ in the acknowledgment of their contribution to the war on deadly coronavirus.
In fact, Khan, 85, is credited with developing around 300 different sub-varieties of ‘dussehri,’ the most prominent mango variety grown in the mango belt, especially, Malihabad, 28 km from Lucknow. He has developed the new varieties by using graft technique and has got them named after prominent Bollywood and sport celebrities and political figures including PM Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah,, UP CM Yogi Adityanath, Congress chief Sonia, Gandhi, Aishwarya Rai, Amitabh Bachchan , cricketer Sachin Tendulkar and many more.
“The hard work being put to fight the pandemic in these difficult times by keeping their families behind moved me to name these two varieties after ‘doctor’ and ‘police’ personnel,” said Khan.
Sharing more details about the new varieties, Khan said he was waiting for the varieties to ripe in his orchard and hopefully they would be ready for plucking next month.
However, Khan could not hide his concern for the market prospects of dussehri given the persistent restrictions in the domestic and export market following the lockdown. In fact, by this time of the year, mango growers of UP, which produces around 65 per cent of global yield of the fruit, finalise sales contracts for the season with the traders and exporters. But this year, the process has not taken off yet due to the COVID -19 lockdown.
Meanwhile, the mango growers have sought institutional procurement of the crop as they have not been able to sell the produce in the open market due to restrictions.
In UP, mango is produced in an area of 2.5 lakh hectares. Lucknow, Pratapgarh, Allahabad, Bulandshahar, Saharanpur, Faizabad, Varanasi, Moradabad, Barabanki, Meerut, Unnao, Sitapur, Hardoi, Gorakhpur, Basti, JP Nagar and Mathura are the major mango producing belts in the state.
Popular varieties like chausa, dusheri, fazli, gulab khas, langra, mallika and amrapali are produced in the state. With the prices of ready mango varieties -- alphonso and kesar -- dwindling due to the lockdown, the growers of dussehri have knocked at the doors of the state government for relief.
In a letter to UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Mango Growers Association of India has demanded a slew of urgent measures to protect state mango farmers, on the lines of growers of alphonso and kesar varieties, which are primarily grown in Maharashtra and Gujarat, respectively, from economic losses.
“Alphonso, which normally sells at Rs 1,500 a dozen, is currently selling at Rs 400-500 a dozen this year, owing to the slump in domestic and export demand. Even transportation of the fruit to the market is also a major issue,” said Insram Ali, Association president. He said kesar farmers were suffering. “Kesar sale peaks in April. But, consignments are not reaching big markets, such as Delhi, and thus incurring losses to
growers,” he added.
Moreover, the loss to the crop due to unpredictable weather has also increased the plight of the mango growers. According to Ali, UP’s mango production, which is dominated by dussehri with an 80 per cent share, is estimated at almost 3.5 million tonnes (MT), down 12.5 per cent compared to last year’s yield of over 4 MT. UP exports mango to the Gulf countries including Iran, United Arab of Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Bangladesh besides, US and Europe.