Amid kinnow glut, Punjab Agri Export Corporation to procure fruit from growers

Ruchika M Khanna

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Chandigarh, January 17

With kinnow growers in the state continuing to go in for distress sale of their crop and uprooting their orchards, the Punjab Agri Export Corporation has finally come to their rescue by deciding to procure the fruit.

Kinnow growers in Malwa region have been resorting to desperate measures, including uprooting of their orchards and shifting back to wheat-paddy monoculture after kinnow prices have failed to rise above Rs 5 per kg. Last year, they fetched a price of Rs 20-25 a kg.

“This year, there has been overfruiting in the kinnow orchards because of adverse weather conditions during growth period and thinning of orchards did not happen. As a result, bumper production of fruits and dwindling demand in the wake of orange influx from Maharashtra has aggravated the problem for kinnow growers,” rued Gurpreet Singh Sandhu, who has 20 acres of orchard at Patti Sadiq village of Abohar.

Kinnow production this year is expected to touch 13.50 lakh metric tonnes. Last year, it was 8 lakh metric tonnes. Though minuscule, the corporation is making efforts to procure kinnow for its food processing plant in Abohar, going in for contracts with orchardists to pluck and market their kinnows, and also for helping them find new markets to sell their produce in central, eastern and southern states.

The corporation has decided to make four lakh litres of kinnow juice this year. For this, kinnow sourcing has begun. Since there are many issues with the quality of the kinnow, the corporation has decided to buy 5,000 tonnes of C and D grade kinnow for processing into juice. Officials say that though this inferior quality of kinnow is generally 30 per cent of the total produce, this year the lower quality kinnow is in much higher percentage.

“We have also made contracts with orchardists to pluck and market their kinnows at Rs 10-11 per kg. The higher quality ones will be sold in retail, while the others will be used for processing into juice. Kinnows to be procured from Hoshiarpur region will be processed at the Abohar plant only as the dewetting plant is only there,” said Ranbir Singh, General Manager, Punjab Agri Export Corporation. He added that while they were actively promoting sale of kinnow in Maharashtra, Bhubaneswar, Varanasi and Siliguri, they have also written to APEDA to help them start exports to Bangladesh, where a duty of Rs 90 per kg on kinnow has made exports unviable.