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‘Ishad’, a native mango variety grown in Ankola taluk of Uttara Kannada district in Karnataka, commands good demand from within and outside the district during summer.
The thin-skinned, fleshy and small-seeded fruit is, however, facing tough competition from other varieties with regard to production and consumption.
Speaking to BusinessLine at his office in Ankola, around 38 km from Karwar, the district headquarters of Uttara Kannada, Pundalik P Prabhu, President of the Hichkada group’s Vividoddesha Sahakari Sangha, said consuming an Ishad is like having a meal. However, one of the disadvantages of the fruit is its short shelf-life after ripening. This makes it difficult to transport the variety over long distances.
The Sangha operates Oriental Canneries, an Ishad mango pulp manufacturing unit at Ankola. Prabhu said the current generation in the region is not interested either in Ishad cultivation or consumption. Instead the preference is for outside varieties such as Alphonso and Mallika.
Prabhu’s co-operative processes Ishad mango and markets the pulp under the ‘Oriental’ brand. Stating that many people from Uttara Kannada living in Mumbai and Hubballi prefer Ishad pulp, he said the co-operative produces around 10,000-12,000 tins (each 850 gm)of pulp annually.
However, a decade ago, the number stood at around 20,000 tins.
The British link
Not many are aware of the fact that it was the British who took the initiative for Ishad value-addition and export to their country.
Shivananda Kalave, an environmentalist from Sirsi taluk of Uttara Kannada district, who has chronicled the history of Ishad, said the British started Oriental Canneries and Industries for value-addition to the Ishad mango in 1908.
In 1970, Hichkada group bought this unit and retained the brand name. The Oriental Canneries campus has many mango trees ageing around 90 years, and a majority of them are Ishad. Some farmers had taken up Ishad cultivation in the nearby areas then, he said.
Ullas Gunaga, a grower from Ankola, said that this variety is grown in Ankola, Gokarna, Agsur and Madangeri areas of the taluk. The fruit weighs up to 4 kg in some cases, and an old Ishad tree yields nearly 3,000-4,000 mangoes a year.
Awareness needs to spread
He feared that the yield and area of cultivation might come down in the coming years as there is no focused attention on this crop now. The departments concerned, marketing agencies, and the horticultural research agencies should think of exploring the potential of this crop, said Gunaga.
He said that any move to create awareness on this fruit to the outside world and to promote its cultivation in Ankola can help create many enterprises around this crop in the years to come.
Though a good candidate for a GI (geographical indication) tag, the fruit remains in oblivion due to the lack of attention by stakeholders, he added.
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