Hill orange yield drops by over 50 per cent - Fungus, pests and lack of rain hit production at a time Nagpur comes up with bumper yield

Vivek Chhetri, TT, Darjeeling, Nov. 24: The orange orchards in the Darjeeling hills, the source of Bengal's sweet and succulent winter treat, have become pale because fungal infection and pest attacks have dropped the yield of the fruit and started killing many of the trees.
An official of the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration's (GTA) agriculture department said 50 to 60 per cent of the oranges cultivated in the hills had been destroyed. Farmer Dil Kumar Rai said white fungus had ruined 90 per cent of his harvest and that of his relatives. Oranges are grown on 4,742 acres in the hills.
Darjeeling oranges have not yet arrived in the Calcutta and Siliguri markets as the harvest season has just started. Traders who source winter oranges from Kurseong said it was unlikely that the fruit would fetch a higher price than last year in Calcutta and Siliguri despite high demand and shrunken supply because of a bumper crop in Nagpur, another orange-producing centre in the country. Nagpur oranges are already selling in Calcutta.
Rai, who cultivates oranges on two acres in Kurseong's Sitong, said that last year he had earned Rs 2.6 lakh. "This year, I have an yield worth Rs 30,000 only. My relatives who had pocketed Rs 2.85 lakh last year are not expected to earn more than Rs 60,000 this time," he said.
According to Rai, 4,200 of the 5,000 families in Sitong were dependent on orange and ginger cultivation. The rest work in cinchona plantations. "The orange yield has been about 90 per cent less compared to what it was last year," he said.
Naresh Prasad, a trader who gets oranges from Sitong and had collected about 1,000 trucks of the fruit from the area last year along with other wholesalers, said "this time, we expect only about 50 trucks". Each truck can ferry around 30,000 oranges.
"The market price (of oranges from Darjeeling) will be almost the same as last year as Nagpur has had a good yield," he said.

Rai said the fungus had killed many trees. "The leaves have turned pale yellow and the few fruits on the trees are small," he said. Several farmers said that soon after the flowering season ended, they realised the yield would not be good.

Plucking starts in November-end and continues till mid-January.

Ram Prasad Sanyal, a plant biologist and the assistant director of the GTA's agriculture department, said the orange production would dip by "50 to 60 per cent compared to the last season".

He said besides the fungal infection and pest attacks, the lack of rain during the flowering period was also a reason for the low yield.

Unlike the Darjeeling orange, the Nagpur variety has a geographical index and is harvested twice. The October-November produce has been dubbed "bumper" all over Vidarbha.

Farmers in Sitong said officials from various GTA departments had visited their orange orchards but nothing much could be done to improve the yield. "We need institutionalised and continuous support from the government," Rai said.

Additional reporting by Jaideep Hardikar in Nagpur