Himachal apples face global competition

The apple bowl has started crumbling. Popularly known as ‘apple state’, Himachal Pradesh has been flooded with apples from China and Australia, throwing the local produce out of reckoning.

The imported apples are gaining popularity for their sweetness and attractive colour. “The demand for imported apples is going up,” Ramesh Chandel, a wholesale dealer, said. “Every day, we sell 30-40 cartons of Chinese and Australian apples.”

The local  crop of apples has taken a beating in the past few years. “The quality and quantity of local apples have suffered due to rising temperature in the upper reaches of the state,”  Dr JS Sharma of YS Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry said.
Prolonged dry spell and lack of adequate snowfall in the hills of Himachal Pradesh have pushed the Rs20 billion fruit industry on the verge of extinction.

“The ideal temperature for bumper apple production is between 15-18 degrees Celcius. But these days, temperature in areas where apples are produced hovers between 25 and 30 degrees Celcius, thus damaging produce,” Sharma said.

Though about 81% of the total cultivated area in the state is rain-fed, almost all districts in the state received deficient rainfall in the past few years. These ecological changes, caused by global warming, have affected the hill state and its apple production, he said.

“In January, the mean maximum temperature for Shimla district was 14.4 degrees Celsius, 5.6 degrees Celsius above normal, the mean minimum temperature was 5.8 degrees Celsius, 3.8 degrees Celsius above normal,” he said.

Snow is considered the “white manure” for apple orchards. But “apple orchards in Shimla, Kullu and Mandi have been receiving scanty snowfall,” said Sharma. “The hills are warming up, snowline is declining and glaciers are receding. Earlier, there was an accumulation of three to four feet of snow in most of the mid-hills till March-end,” another official said.

He said the apple crop suffered mostly due to the lack of snow in 1999-2000, when production came down to nine million standard boxes from the usual 25-27 million boxes.