Pomegranates: India
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Rajasthan
As in 2023
Harish Damodaran, Nov 5, 2023: The Indian Express
A relatively new crop to Rajasthan, Pomegranate grown in an estimated 12,500 hectares in the state
The 50-year-old’s orchard on which he grows 9,000 pomegranate or anar plants — surrounded by sand dunes in an arid agro-climatic zone where one mostly sees Prosopis juliflora (an alien invasive plant), perennial shrubs such as safed bui (desert cotton) and aak (Calotropis procera), and the hardy khejri flowering tree grow— is testimony to what technology and human enterprise can do.
Pomegranate is a relatively new crop to Rajasthan, grown in an estimated 12,500 hectares, which includes 10,000 hectares over south Barmer, Sanchore, Jalore and Sirohi, and 2,500 hectares covering north Barmer, Jodhpur and Phalodi districts. Mali took up anar cultivation after Raghunath Krishnaram Kumawat, who established a 2,500-plant, 14-bigha pomegranate orchard in the same village about 10 years ago.
The 30-km stretch from Dechu to Kalau is now a major anar cluster, with all the orchards having drip irrigation facility. Mali’s land value has shot up from a mere Rs 8,000 per bigha in 2004 to Rs 1 lakh in 2017 and Rs 5 lakh now — all thanks to anar.
Till about 2004, Mali cultivated only bajra (pearl millet), guar (cluster bean), moth (dew bean) and moong (green gram) during a single kharif or post-monsoon crop season. Even their fate was dependent on the rain gods — “Sab upar waale ke bharose par”.
In 2005, Mali made the transition from rainfed to irrigated agriculture. He invested in a sprinkler irrigation system that enabled rainwater to be stored, pumped out and sprayed as small droplets through nozzles. With water-saving sprinklers, Mali could now plant rabi (winter-spring) season crops — raida (mustard), chana (chickpea), jeera (cumin) and isabgol (psyllium husk) — and also groundnut during kharif.
The turning point came in August 2017. That was when the state horticulture department supplied him 12,000 disease-free, tissue-cultured plants of Bhagwa Sinduri, a high-yielding pomegranate variety developed by the Mahatma Phule Krishi Vidyapeeth University at Rahuri in Maharashtra.
“They charged Rs 40 per plant and credited back Rs 16 to my bank account after I bought it. Of the 12,000 plants, 3,000 were infected by nematodes and termites. The remaining 9,000, planted at 8 ft x 12 ft spacing, survived,” recalled Mali. He further spent Rs 8.5 lakh on laying 10,000 metres of drip irrigation pipes with emitters at 2 feet distance, and got back Rs 3 lakh as subsidy on this investment as well.
Mali today grows the high-value horticulture crop through drip irrigation that allows water — drawn from 380-400 ft depth by two 30 horsepower submersible tubewell pumps — to be used mostly efficiently. That’s the way desert agriculture is done in Israel.
Phalodi district receives just 215 mm of annual rainfall, as against the all-India average of 1,160 mm and 329 mm for West and 685 mm for East Rajasthan. Every drop then counts.
“Flood irrigation is useless here, as the soil is sandy. With drip, you give water directly to the plants and at their root zone where it’s really required. Even fertiliser is given through drip along with the irrigation water (fertigation) or as liquid directly to the leaves (foliar application), instead of conventional field broadcasting,” explained Bhagirath Choudhary, founder-director of the Jodhpur-based South Asia Biotechnology Centre (SABC).
Choudhary works with farmers like Mali, by connecting them both to big buyers and input suppliers such as INI Farms (one of India’s top fresh fruits and vegetables exporter) and Yara Fertilisers India Pvt. Ltd (subsidiary of the Norwegian crop nutrition giant).
The soil in Mali’s orchard is alkaline (pH of 8) with very low organic carbon and nitrogen. That’s being addressed through Yara’s specialty water-soluble and liquid fertiliser products designed to meet the crop’s specific nutrient requirements through different growth stages — from pruning of the trees and defoliation in June-July (for removing dried twigs, branches and leaves) to harvesting the fruits in December-February.
Mali expects his average fruit yield this time to be around 15 kg per plant. That, for the 9,000 plants in his 80-bigha orchard, translates into 135 tonnes. “We are trying, through better crop nutrition, to increase the weight of his individual fruits from 100-200 to 250-300 grams and also improve their colour to maroon/ruby red. It will help fetch a better price,” said Choudhary. Even at Rs 150/kg, Mali’s produce would be worth over Rs 2 crore — or Rs 1.5 crore-plus after deducting costs of Rs 35-40 lakh.
In early June, SABC took 30 pomegranate farmers from western Rajasthan on an Anar Shodh Yatra. The 10-day field trip, supported by the NABARD’s Agri-Export Facilitation Centre in Jodhpur, involved visits to INI Farms’ integrated pack-house facility near Pune, the National Research Centre on Pomegranate at Solapur, and the Yara Crop Nutrition Centre at Pandharpur. The idea was to expose the farmers to the best cultivation and post-harvest management practices in Maharashtra, which accounts for 55 per cent of India’s annual pomegranate production of 3.2 million tonnes. Rajasthan is at a distant No. 5 after Gujarat, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.
“Pomegranate is a sturdy crop, requiring just enough irrigation that can be given through drip. Although grown only over the last 10 years in Rajasthan, the dry weather and low temperatures during December-March, when the fruits mature, is favourable. Infestation of bacterial blight and other diseases is higher in humid than dry conditions. Rajasthan and Gujarat have an advantage there over Maharashtra or Karnataka,” noted Pankaj Khandelwal, managing director of INI Farms, which exports both whole pomegranate fruits and arils (seed pods) from India.
For now, Rajasthan’s farmers have shown that pomegranate can be turned into red gold in the Thar just as horticulture has thrived in Israel’s Negev desert.
