Summer tangoes with mangoes to cost more

MUMBAI: The luscious Alphonso, the best loved variety among the king of fruits, is in short supply this season. The eagerly awaited golden fruit, has made an early entry but is selling at higher prices compared to last year.

Early on Saturday morning, less than half a truckload came into the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) wholesale market at Navi Mumbai, and sold at a princely sum of nearly Rs 600 per dozen. “There is a shortage of mangoes this year, specially the Alphonso which has the highest demand. We are buying from the farmers at very high rates,” says Rajesh Jaiswal, proprietor, RJ Fresh Produce, a fruit wholesaler and retailer operating out of the market.

The bottomline is that a result the prices of the best Alphonso mangoes sometimes quotes at Rs 800 per dozen in the retail market. The shortage is caused largely by unseasonal rains in Ratnagiri and Devgarh in coastal Maharashtra, home to the Alphonso. More than two lakh hectares in coastal Maharashtra come under cultivation annually for the Alphonso.

In addition to this, there was an extended cold spell in these areas, due to which the mango trees couldn’t flower in time. The extensive use of fertilisers by mango growers has also been cited as a possible reason for changing soil chemistry and weakening the crop.

In the peak season for mangoes, the traders feel that only 60-70% of the expected produce has hit the market, and the total crop could fall short of the demand by a third. According to Ram Morde, one of the major fruit sellers in Crawford Market in Mumbai, “At this time I’m selling about 1,000 dozen of mangoes a day. But last year this would have been nearly 2,000 dozen at the same time.”

But Mr Morde says that demand has been extremely high and a dozen that would have sold for Rs 300 last year is selling for Rs 600 this time around, so he hasn’t lost anything in terms of overall value. The prices will decline, however, as mangoes are expected to make it to the APMC market in the course of this week.

In fact, the wholesalers think it would come down below Rs 200 per dozen by the end of the week. Says Shreekant Mishra, a fruit wholesaler, “The mango season would have started in full flow by now but this year it might be restricted to just one month, between April 15 and May 15.

Prices will start coming down only after the supplies come in.” If the worst case scenario for Alphonso mangoes comes true, then reinforcements are expected to come in from Uttar Pradesh and other areas of the North. These include the payari, langda, kesari and rajapuri, for which there is a huge demand from Mumbai’s migrant population and the lower economic strata that otherwise can’t afford the Alphonso.