Tapping fruit biodiversity. A passionate farmer grows more than 700 exotic varieties

Many farmers in India now grow foreign fruits such as rambutan, dragon fruit, and mangosteen. In fact, cultivation of such fruits began as a hobby by a few passionate farmers years ago.

Anil Balanja, a young farmer from Belthangady taluk of Dakshina Kannada district in Karnataka, is one such passionate farmer. For him, growing foreign fruits is a continuous research and development activity.

When this correspondent visited his farm (around 70 km from Mangaluru) on an early Monday morning, Balanja was busy grafting some of the foreign fruits in his nursery. Taking time off from his work, Balanja told B usinessLine that he has been collecting different varieties of foreign fruits from across the world for the past 20 years.

“I ventured into agriculture at the age of 19 soon after completing my PU (pre-university) in Arts 20 years ago. The collection and cultivation of foreign fruits is a passion for me, and I grow arecanut and coconut for livelihood,” he said.

Balanja said he has planted more than 700 varieties of fruit plants on 30 acres from across 40 countries in the world in the last two decades. All of them did not yield because of the climatic conditions here. However, he was able to grow fruits in around 40 per cent of those planted.

Growing fruit plants also needs patience as plants from some seeds may take up to 8-15 years to start yielding. Some grafted varieties start yielding in 2-3 years.

Balanja said he selects fruit plants from the tropical belt. He now has plant collections from Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Brazil to name a few.

He has made good use of social media platforms like Facebook to network with fruit growers in other countries, and also made a couple of visits to Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia to attend agri exhibitions and to meet the fruit growers in those countries.

First harvest

Asked about the first foreign fruit he harvested in his farm, he said Rollinia deliciosa (also known as biriba) from Brazil, a fruit from the Seethaphal family, was the first foreign fruit to grow in his farm. Explaining the background behind this, he said he got in exchange of Seethaphal seeds grown in his farm from a Brazilian Facebook friend.

Cultivating all the fruits are not that easy. “I was the first one to harvest cempedak fruit from Malaysia in our country years ago. Now it is there elsewhere,” he said, adding that he has stopped its cultivation now as the heavy rainfall in the region during the monsoon leads to the decaying of plant inspite of spraying fungicide every month.

Blue Java banana, an Indonesian fruit, is the recent harvest in his farm. Stating that the fruit’s outer cover is blue, he said it is smooth like ice-cream when the fruit matures. He paid around ₹21,000 for this tissue cultured plant from Indonesia.

Disease management

Managing more than 700 varieties needs a good amount of time on tackling disease management, issues related to pollination, etc in those plants. Terming disease management as a continuous study, he said all his knowledge on diseases is from field experience and not from books.

“We get disease in plants from June to August as heavy rain leads to the problems of nematodes and fungus. Stem-borer is another problem we face here. Fruits face the problems of fruit flies when they mature,” he said.

Giving an example of his continuous research activities, he said though the biriba plant was flowering, it was not yielding fruits. After careful observation for several days, he came to know that there was a problem in its pollination. Following this, he collected the pollen of the plant the previous day and stored it in the refrigerator. He pollinated it artificially the next day at the time of flowering. This measure helped bring maturity to the plant, and started pollinating and later on getting the yield from the plant.

Nursery

Though growing foreign fruits is a passion for Balanja, it requires investment on his part as he has to source it from other countries. Considering this, he started a nursery of his own to propagate the crop in the country and to meet the investments he makes on the fruit crops. His nursery develops plants of around 200 varieties of fruits now. His customers range from nurseries in West Bengal to Thiruvananthapuram, he said, adding that they prefer the crop that are successful in his farm.

To a query on the possibilities of commercialising a few fruit crops in the country, he said doku is a variety from Mahogany family that is popular in Thailand and Malaysia. It has medicinal properties also, and can be cultivated here, he said.

Another potential fruit is longan fruit. He said India is importing longan fruit from China now, and it is being dehydrated and sold as a dry fruit.

Balanja’s farm is a visiting spot for the fruit experts, agri students and scientists, and farmers among others. Now he has purchased six acres of land to set up a separate fruit farm for the benefit of scientists and students. At present, the fruit crops are grown along with arecanut plants in his farm.

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