Daijiworld Media Network – Bengaluru (MS)

Bengaluru, Jun 18: Foreign and local yard fruits, which were limited to one’s own land, are being grown widely by fruit farmers in the state and getting high yield and income also.

The attraction of fruit farmers in growing foreign fruits like avocado, dragon fruit, rambutan and mangostein has increased by 25%. In addition, they are showing more inclination towards growing traditional fruits like jackfruit, tamarind and jambul fruit which are considered healthy.

Farmers are growing more of these fruits because of its popularity in the market, easy way of farming them and ability to withstand change in weather conditions.

Compared to traditionally grown grapes, dragon fruit needs 80% less water. Maintenance is more or less the same according to Narayanaswamy, farmer of Chikkaballapur. So he has given up grape farming and started growing dragon and avocado fruits.

Fruit scientist of IIHR G Karunakaran says, “IIHR is giving technology support to the farmers so that they can get good yield. Now farming of foreign and local crops is reduced. So the farmers are getting good prices in the market. Farmers are going away from growing fruits like pomegranate and grapes because of high maintenance costs.”

Ashok Kumar, farmer of Doddaballapur converted his 40 acre grape farm into jackfruit farm. He says that the special breed of jackfruit that is grown in his area helped him to prefer it over the traditional grapefruit. These crops are suitable to areas where the ground water level is less than 1,500 feet.

Ashok Kumar says that excepting coastal region of Karnataka, most of the farmers are showing affinity towards growing short duration crops as these are highly priced and have medicinal properties.

Farmer from Hoskote Venkatesh says that he has converted his grape farm into dragon fruit farm and he is getting 80% more income. He says that after Covid, people are more health conscious and he has sold more than 2,000 plants this year. He feels there will be great demand for dragon fruit in the coming days.