It’s the middle of May. In one of Narsapur’s sprawling mango orchard, the air is damp and the black soil, wet and soft. Instead of the hot and dry summer breeze known as ‘loo’, a mellow earthy aroma permeates everywhere.

Standing in the shade of a 20-year-old Banganpalli (a.k.a. benishan and safeda) mango tree, orchard owner Srinivas looks at the still ripening mangoes. “The best taste of Banganpalli is in the final days of May. They become sweeter if the air is dry and hot. But now...,” his voice trails off. The nine-acre orchard adjoins the highway in Narsapur, about a 100 km from Hyderabad and one of the driest parts of Telangana.

A feast of mangoes

The spread of mango varieties at the Fruit Research Station | Video Credit: Serish Nanisetti

Madhu Reddy, another mango orchard owner, says she is yet to harvest the fruit. “This unseasonal rain pushes the harvesting time. A late monsoon last year delayed the winter. Flowering came thrice, but most did not stay on the trees, so fruit formation has been very low this year.”

The stories of Madhu and Srinivas represent a trend in mango cultivation: fickle weather, a product of climate change, pushing farmers of traditional mango varieties to a corner.

At the Fruit Research Station (FRS) in Sangareddy, scientists are developing mango varietals resistant to climate change. “We began a study titled ‘Effect of Climate Variability on Mango’ 20 years ago. It’s an ongoing research, and we found that frequent weather changes have limited effect on Suvarnarekha [a mango variety], while Banganpalli and Himayat are very sensitive, especially during the flowering stage,” says V. Suchitra, head of the FRS.

The institute has a germplasm collection of 477 mango accessions. “Our research is focussed on Dusseri, Himayat, Banganpalli, Kesar, Suvarnarekha and Totapuri. The research can be extrapolated to find other safe varieties as the weather pattern is becoming unpredictable,” says Suchitra.

“The mango crop is most vulnerable at the flowering stage, where it requires cool night temperatures and bright sunshine during daytime for at least 15 days between October and December. This has been disrupted,” says Suchitra. The result has been a drop in yield of some varieties and loss of taste, leaving orchard owners in the lurch.

Making mango cultivation even less remunerative in Telangana is the fact that the State does not have a port of exit for the fruit, which is currently being transported through either Bengaluru or Mumbai.

This also skews the data as the exports are recorded as being made from these two ports. Across the country, farmers are switching from mango to other crops, and the area under cultivation has fallen by 0.76% to 23.32 lakh hectares (57.62 lakh acres) from 23.5 lakh hectares (58.06 lakh acres) in 2022-23.

“I will get ₹5 lakh or ₹6 lakh this year from my mango crop, which is almost the same as last year. It’s my passion for farming that is keeping me here,” says Srinivas. 

It is the same passion that once turned Telangana into one of the biggest experimental sites for mangoes. The nobility and royalty vied to create one exotic variety after other by grafting and cultivation.

The result was varieties with such names as Azam-us-Samar, Asif Pasand, Mahmooda Vikarabad, Shakkar Gutli, Nawab Pasand. Now, as demand for commercial varieties soars, these delicate and choice mangoes are being pushed out of the market by more popular and commercial varieties. And with their disappearance, a slice of India’s botanical history goes under.

The royal connection

Choice mango varieties have anecdotal tales that hark back centuries. They also show the ebb and flow of different reigns. Some of them are:

Taimur Pasand

Amrapali

Bobbili Panasa

Bennet Alphonso

Kensington

Latif-us-Samar

Hamlet

Nazeem Pasand

Mombasa

Begum Pasand

Mahmooda Vikarabad