Ehsan Fazili/ Bandipora

Nazir Ahmad, a government employee is a busy man these days, for besides his job, he has to supervise the harvesting and packing of apple in his ancestral orchard in Bandipore, north Kashmir

As the October days are warmer, and morning misty and cold, Delicious apple, the indigenous variety of the fruit, is ready in his orchard. The men at work pluck apples from the droopy branches so laden with fragrant, and juicy red apples.

The harvested fruit is graded for quality and size and separated before packing these in the wooden and cardboard boxes. The fruit boxes are loaded in trucks headed for Azadpur Mandi in Delhi.

Grading and packaging of apples (Pic by Basit Zargar)

Most of this work is done by the locals clad in pherans and woolens and with their rough hands. 

The apple growers have been making all efforts over the past few weeks to hasten the dispatch of fruit-laden trucks so as to reach markets well around the festival of lights, Diwali. “It is not for the first time that the festival (Diwali) adds to the speedy dispatch of fruit to the markets outside the valley”, said Nazir Ahmad.

Nazir Ahmed’s grandfather had planted over a dozen trees more than six decades ago, while his father upgraded the orchard to about five acres. Nazir Ahmad says since his days as a young man, he remembers the vibe of the season when everything moved quickly to dispatch the apple to Delhi and other cities ahead of Diwali and Dussehra festivals.

During the last about two decades, Nazir Ahmad has been fully looking after the growth, nurture and marketing of the apple fruit, mainly Delicious or American.

His business faces setbacks at times due to weather conditions like incessant rains or hailstorms, diseases and infections like scab and, the road and transport issues.

Unexpectedly, a hue and cry was witnessed over the blockade of NH 44 for nearly three weeks through September beginning August 26, halting the movement of apple-laden trucks for markets outside.

Rotten apple being dumped in September

Farmers threw the apple that had rotted in the stationary trucks stuck on the highway due to a landslide causing blockade between Banihal and Ramban and a stretch of over 500 meters of the highway near Udhampur.

“Initially it was believed that the highway would reopen after a few days, but there was hardly any immediate end to it, leading to damage of the entire lot of the fresh fruit from the valley”, which later took about 20 days, said Bashir Ahmad, President of Fruit Mandi, Parimpora Srinagar.

“The destroyed fruit produce in the stranded trucks on the highway was mostly the Gala apple variety”, which is grown in Kashmir using high density (HD) cultivation methods, added Bashir Ahmad, who is also the Chairman of Kashmir Valley Fruit Growers cum Dealers Union, an apex body of all fruit growers in Kashmir.

Apart from Gala, the fruit included Kashmir pear, peach and some other varieties, he told Awaz-the Voice. Not only the fruit dumped in the stranded trucks on the highway, a large quantity was also lying in the orchards and stores in the valley that was all reduced to mud, Bashir Ahmad, President of the Fruit Mandi, Srinagar said.

“The unusual highway blockade led to the losses to all the growers, buyers from outside and traders, who had already paid advance money to procure the fruit”, he said.

Bashir Ahmad informed that the valley produces 20 to 22 lakh metric tonnes of apple annually, and it was expected to go up to about 25 lakh metric tonnes this year. Damage to the entire produce of Gala, comprising about 10 percent of the total Kashmir apple production, was caused due to heavy rains resulting in blockade of highway in early September this year.

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In Kashmir, the apple orchards are spread over an area of 1.72 lakh hectares of land procuring 78 percent of India’s apple production. The area under high density (HD) Gala is between 1000 and 3000 hectares of land, according to the experts.