Bumper crop of oranges and sweet lime likely to bring down cost but drastic fall in apple production in Kashmir may up fruit’s prices.
An apple a day may keep your doctor away, but the forbidden fruit will come for a bitter price which threatens to leave you with bad aftertaste! However, compensate that with Vitamin C as prices of major citrus fruits such as orange, sweet lime, kinu as well as pomegranate are likely to fall because of bumper crop. Apple will cost more due to drastic fall in crop in Kashmir.
Oranges are priced at around Rs25-Rs30 per kilogram in the wholesale market, while sweet limes (mausambi) are available in price range of Rs15-20 per kilogram. Oranges mainly come from Nagpur in Maharashtra which is also known as the orange city.
Sweet limes are imported from Aurangabad and Hyderabad.
The citrus fruits have seen a bumper crop this year due to good rain in recent days which is expected to flood city market within a fortnight, said Shyamlal Rohra, president of Ahmedabad
Wholesale Fruit Merchant Association. He said, "Around 25-30% fall is expected in prices of orange and sweet lime." The season of oranges and sweet limes has started and will last till December end. "Kinus coming from Punjab is also expected to come in a large quantity because of good crop," said Kamal Murjani of Kamal Fruit in Kalupur.
However, for those who relish apples, this bit of news may come with some distaste. The bad news is that apple is likely to cost more with failure of crop in Kashmir. Generally, red delicious apple from Kashmir are available in the market during this season providing a fresh substitute to stored imported apple.
However, heavy storm has destroyed apple crop in Kashmir. "As a result we are expecting the arrival of apple to reduced to only 40% of average arrival," said Rohra. He said that city consumes around 24,000 boxes of apple every day.
Last year the price of a box of apple containing 15 kg apples used to cost around Rs500 to Rs700, which is expected to reach around Rs700 to Rs1,000 this season, said Rohra. On the other hand, Murjani feels that the traders will have to stock apple as fresh arrival is not expected to come after 15 days of festival of Diwali.
People will have alternative of buying imported apple but it would be costlier in absence of local variety. "Imported apples are costing around Rs120 per kg in retain market,” said Murjani.
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