The Indian Institute of Horticultural Research (IIHR) has offered to help mango farmers who are in distress as the annual harvesting season for the king of fruits has begun just when the country is gripped by COVID-19 lockdown.
As the main problem is that of finding bulk buyers in quick time for this highly perishable produce, the IIHR has offered to handhold the farmers in reaching out to buyers like apartment complexes in Bengaluru and industries through it’s network, besides offering technologies for value addition and increasing shelf-life.
IIHR Director M.R. Dinesh told The Hindu that the institute is looking at connecting mango farmers with not only fresh fruit market, but also the processing industry. He said the farmers could contact the institute’s technology business incubator — Business Entrepreneurship & Start-up Support through Technology in Horticulture (BESST-HORT).
Principal Scientist and CEO of BESST-HORT C.K. Narayana said that the business incubator would use it’s industry network to market mangoes. However, he sought to advise farmers to think towards coming as a group or supply in bulk quantum with a minimum of one tonne so that it would be easy to market them with big apartment complexes.
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Those interested can contact BEST-HORT COO Vaibhav on 8197926903 with details on product name, price, organic/natural/inorganic, minimum order quantity, and so on.
IIHR is also looking at the possibilities of using its technical inputs to help farmers delay the arrival of their mango produce to market by three to four weeks. This can be done by storing the produce in nearby cold storages, besides using the IIHR’s protocols for post-harvest treatments that can help hold the crop for some more time, he explained.
Similarly, farmers with pickling varieties of mango may preserve the fruits in brine so that they could be stored for nearly a year and used later. The institute would offer technical guidance in this regard to farmers, said Mr. Narayana.
For the growers of local varieties, which may not fetch good price, the institute has advised that such fruits could be harvested a little early when the fruit acidity is high and dried in the sun for making raw mango powder. This can be sold to spice industries, he said.
The institute has also referred to its other technologies for osmotic dehydration of ripe and semi-ripe mangoes, mango concentrate, mango fruit bar, and squash that have a shelf-life of six months; and also the technology for making probioticated mango beverage with the help of mango pulp.
Dr. Narayana also said that the institutes’s scientific ripening chamber technology of enhancing the ripening process of mangoes by exposing the fruits to ethylene gas released from liquid ethrel/ethephon in airtight rooms or chambers could also be tried for quick and quality ripening.