Alphonso output takes another hit,pests & climate to blame

Farmers said they expected a good season this year after the initial crop in January was good.

However,fluctuating weather and sudden changes in temperature led to large scale dropping of the fruit,burning of fruit apart from attacks from pests like mango hoppers and thrips. Farmers said the crop was half the produce last year,which itself was a bad year.

“Till January 20,we were happy about flowering and confident of a good crop. Low temperatures resulted in cumulative attack of hoppers and thrips from which the crop did not recover. Our conservative estimate is that there will only be 15 per cent produce this year,” said Dr Vivek Bhide,who owns mango orchards in Ratnagiri.

Along with Devgad and parts of Vengurla in Sindhudurg district,Ratnagiri remains the largest supplier of Alphonso — with bulk supplies made to Mumbai followed by Pune and Kolhapur. The area under mango cultivation in Ratnagiri district is nearly 65,000 hectares and it’s 30,000 hectares in Sindhudurg.

Farmers said that only 20-25 per cent of the flowers bore fruit and most of it is already in the market. The next lot is likely to reach the market only in May. That is the time mangoes from Gujarat and Karnataka reach the market and competition in pricing increases. At the APMC (Vashi),they have received 10-12,000 crates of the fruit this year. Mango trader and APMC director Sanjay Pansare said at the moment,the situation is similar to last year,they are not expecting much crop this year in the peak April-May season.