Know Your Apple

Kuldeep Chauhan in Kotgarh & Prashant Saxena in Chandigarh

Markets test the best, and no matter what, it's the profit that counts. Munch it on this apple season: the Kinnauri variety stacked up neatly in a fruit shop near your home stands face-to-face with its American counterpart, both claiming to be scrumptious, juicy and delicious to the last piece. Your split-second verdict is: let's try the costlier, exotic American one, its colour outshining its competitor, its heavier look outweighing your price options. 

Something of the sort happened in Europe a few years ago, until the European Food Safety Authority decided to ban the import of American apple after tests confirmed that chemical diphenylamine, or DPA, was used in excess of the prescribed rules. The chemical is used to prevent 'storage scalding' (the brown spots that apples develop). On its own, the chemical was found harmless, but lab testing result was scary: DPA has the potential to break down into family of carcinogens (cancer causing substances). The EFSA banned DPA's use on apples in 2012. Then the agency cut down the tolerable level of DPA on imported apples. In 2014, the US Department of Agriculture reportedly found DPA residues on 80% of US-grown apples. The average reading of DPA was reportedly found to be about four times the new European limit. 

The first thing is: we look safer; DPA is banned in India if the stockists are to be believed. And most apple growers struggling with hit-and-trial methods to raise the production and quality of the fruit in Himachal say scientists should check the DPA use by private players in their stores. Dr Kamal Thakur, professor of food science, Dr YS Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry, says no study has so far been done on the chemical substance. 

The lack of awareness and any workable research is shocking for a state that boasts of Rs 3,500-crore apple trade. The haphazard way the apple is grown in the state has forced the government to come out with a Rs 1,160 crore horticulture modernization project this year. It aims at setting up "virtual fruit factories" (where a farmer can produce good sized, colour & shape varieties as per consumer demands) to rejuvenate the sick industry.

Struggling farmers

Sample this: In the apple belt of the state, from Kotgarh to Maroag in Chopal, traditional orchardists end up producing 5-7 tons per hectare compared with 50 tons per hectare in the US, world's second largest apple producer. Horticulturists in Himachal attribute US's high productivity to mechanized virtual "fruit factories" and also to cultivation in flat lands, whereas Himachal has high slopes that make cultivation a tough task. 

Most farmers say they still remain "shoot growers rather than fruit growers" as they lack proper support from the government-run research and development and extension service establishment. The growers, some of them convent-educated, are bitterly complaining that they are losing out to China and the highly developed global markets dominated by root-stock apple varieties.

Government failure

The farmers blame low productivity on failure of government to promote low gestation fruit varieties (root stock) that yield 40-50 tons per hectare besides lack of irrigation facilities and crop failures attributed to bad weather which damages roughly 40% crop each year. Hari Roach, a pioneer in root stock apple plants, arranged imported plant material from abroad. "It cost me Rs 410 per plant, but the plant material was not virus free. But who will tell farmers at what elevation, which soil is best suited for which root stocks?" he asked.

The wide gaps in cultivation has resulted in most Himachal farmers continuing with the traditional royal, red and golden delicious that Satyanand Stokes had introduced when he arrived back in Kotgarh from US in 1916. A few bolder among them are planting new high-density root-stock apple varieties that yield fruit in two to three years. They are replacing the traditional seedling apple cultivars which give them fruit after 10 years. To meet water demands, they block drains in winter that enables soil to absorb water. 

"The new root-stock plant is the answer as it needs less labour and management. We need a support system to save the plant from wind and snow storms," says Lakshman Thakur, a farmer. "We gain about Rs 10 per kg for new apple varieties. We use a combination of manure, cow urine and lassi as bio-fertiliser and bio-pesticides and balance these with chemicals to check bacterial and while flies attacks," he said.

Haphazard growth

Dr Vjyay Kumar Stokes, 77, an IIT-retired professor returned to Kotgarh in 2004 in his bid to rejuvenate the old and diseased apple orchard of his grandfather, Satyanand Stokes "We have set up a world-class apple orchard of 9,000 plants of various varieties imported from the US. They fetch a better price." He has sold two truckloads of fresh apple to Mumbai, Chennai and other markets this year. "But, this is an experiment. Each season there are several innovations in the apple industry and our research and development needs to pull up its socks," he says. "Plant nutrition is the issue now." 

Prem Chauhan (Jhaltar village in Kotkhai) says he has developed his own brand of root-stock. "I uprooted the clone of seedling from the plant, raised a nursery and went for inter-stocking and planted trees in place of old trees by multiple grafting. The imported root stocks have not yielded good results. I produced 2,000 cartons (each containing about 22.5 kg apples) this year and my target is 5,000-7,000 cartons on one hectare, which is as good as in the US," he says, adding his plant material is yet to be authenticated, but he has developed a concept that he shares with others.

It's here a warning comes in. Vijay Thakur, director, research and the former vice-chancellor at the Dr YS Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry, Solan, says: "The farmers' claims have to clear scientific scrutiny. The university has introduced new apple strains over the years that have become popular." 

The fact is horticulture department is not consulting progressive farmers, says Rakesh Singha, a Kotgarh farmer who has planted new root stock varieties in the rocky belt using manure that he gets from his cows. "We must be sure about imported varieties," says Singha. 

Principal secretary (Horticulture) Jagdish Sharma, who is instrumental in the Rs 1,160 crore horticulture modernization project, says: "We will consult farmers. In the meantime, we are thinking of hiring consultants from New Zealand or Holland to guide farmers as to which root stocks suit which altitude."

Former horticulture minister Narender Bragta, who himself is an apple farmer from Kotkhai, says there is no coordination between the university and the horticulture department. "Perhaps we should integrate HPMC, horticultural department and Dr YS Parmar University to make the government-sponsored project successful," says vice chairman, HPMC, and orchardist from Thanedhar, Prakash Thakur.