Gumossis in Mango

With the onset of South west monsoon in July, we experienced a high incidence of Gumossis in well established mango trunks. 

This is a fungal disease and the symptom is that the affected tree starts secretion of gum at a particular point, it spreads throughout the body within three to six months and then the tree dies.
Fortunately, we caught the disease in time and applied Copper Oxy chloride – 10g/L. The affected area needs to be cleaned with a sharp object (like a metallic plate) after which the solution should be painted in and around the affected area. 

Do let us know if anybody experienced any seasonal diseases and how did they overcome it. 

Gumossis

COC being applied



 

Update on Mango fruit setting !

First flowering was noticed in Mid December with the decreasing rains. We saw decent flowering in the month of January as temperatures increased. It too another 2-3 weeks when pea sized fruits were noticed on some of the trees.

Typically, it takes about 120 - 130 days from fruit setting for the fruits to mature for harvest. With the current trends, we should be ready for harvest sometime in mid May.

We are excited about about our first harvest. It will be small since these trees a little over 3 years old. Nonetheless, it will be great to see our effort and labor turn into tangible results.

Stay tuned. More pictures will be posted soon!

Happy New Year and Happy Harvesting !

Here is wishing all our blog followers a happy new year. May the new year brings peace, happiness, and prosperity to your lives. With Pongal around the corner, it should be a great season with a bountiful harvest for those doing rain fed agriculture. 

Monsoons were fairly good this year. Rains were not heavy, however they were regular which worked very well. Often with heavy rains, a lot of water is drained out and wasted. Short but regular showers ensures that the water percolates deep into the soil. As a result, we stopped irrigation from September onwards. Our EB bill dipped by 95% from the previous months, many of the bores had minimum readings.

January has not been very warm so far, with the mercury rising gradually. However, it will take another month before we start feeling the heat. 

The biggest challenge post monsoons has been taming the weeds. However, with the timely intervention of rotavator, we have had good success keeping the growth under control. Mango plots are looking good. 

Flowering has kicked in as well. First flowering was noticed in the second week of December. We hope to see flowers turn into fruits in the coming months.

Our little kitchen garden in the shadenet has been churning out veggies consistently as well. Bottle gourd, bitter gourd, tomatoes, snake gourds, cluster beans and okra have been plenty this year. 

We have about 250 odd trees of Amla that were already planted when we started this back in 2011. It was great to see them fruit for the first time as well. It will take another month or so before they are ready for harvest. 

Coming months should be busy for us with the harvesting and our marketing initiative. Stay tuned for updates!

Bridging farm to fork gap - season 2 !

Last year, if you recall, we marketed over 10 tons of fresh mangoes directly from farms. Produce was cleaned, ripened, graded and packed and sold directly to consumers and corporates. After a phenomenal success, we are planning to increase our capacity to 30 tons for 2015 season. We are also exploring the option of a small cold storage to enable extended shelf life.

With the receding rains, flowering should start in the coming weeks. Yield is expected to be good in 2015 due to favorable monsoons. If you would like to partners with us, in an effort to bridge the farm to fork gap, do get in touch with us - info@saverafarms.com.

We are seeking to do transact directly with farmers within 150 Km from Chennai who are cultivating Imampasand, Alphonso and Banganpalli. 

Let us make the coming season a 'fruitful' one for all of us!!

Mango Cultivation : Effects of Chloride Toxicity

Last month, we did a water analysis for all our bores. While most of the parameters were normal, Chloride toxicity was significant in a few borewells. Typically, an acceptable reading is of 10 meQ/L or lesser but we recorded upto 12-13 meQ/L in a few water samples.

Given the soluble nature of chloride, it is not adsorbed or held back by soils. Therefore it moves readily with the soil-water, is taken up by the crop, moves in the transpiration stream, and accumulates in the leaves. If the chloride concentration in the leaves exceeds the tolerance of the crop, injury symptoms develop such as leaf burn or drying of leaf tissue. Normally, plant injury occurs first at the leaf tips (which is common for chloride toxicity), and progresses from the tip back along the edges as severity increases. Excessive necrosis (dead tissue) is often accompanied by early leaf drop or defoliation. With sensitive crops, these symptoms occur when leaves accumulate from 0.3 to 1.0 percent chloride on a dry weight basis, but sensitivity varies across crops. Many tree crops, for example, begin to show injury above 0.3 percent chloride (dry weight). In established trees, there may not be visible effect. However, long term effects can lead to reduced yield and poor quality of fruits. 

Reducing high chloride levels can be a challenge since there is no fool proof filtration system. Since blending good quality water is often not an option where borewell is the primary source, increased application of green manure and organic matter can buffer the effects of toxicity to a considerable extent. It would be great to hear from others who have experienced chloride toxicity in their plants and were able to successfully mitigate the adverse effects. When fixed assets like borewells and soil present such constraints, knowledge to reduce such impacts becomes invaluable!

Pilot Effort for Fresh Mango

You may recollect earlier this year, we were looking for farms to procure mangoes from in a bid to establish marketing channels. The rationale behind this was to establish reliable, robust and hopefully loyal customer base for next year when we expect to harvest our first large crop. 

The exercise was rich in experience with a lot of insights in the entire supply chain from farm to fork. Apart from the good experience, the entire process was very time consuming, which involved co-ordination with farmers, logistics, interfacing with potential clients, direct retailing etc. As a result, activity on the blog from our end was fairly limited in the last couple of months. Some of our loyal followers even called / mailed us due to drop in blog postings, we appreciate your concern.

We transacted about a total of 10 tons of Banganpalli and Imampasand this season. A total of 15 farms were visited, of which we zeroed down on 3 farms in TN area. Our initial plan was to deal with farm owners directly in order to reduce procurement costs. Unfortunately, in most of the farms, the owner was not in a position to transact directly with the buyer. Farms were contracted out to contractors who had a good network in the mandis. In essence, they maintained the crop during the season and then sold the produce directly themselves or through their affiliates. So when we bought the crop from them, it was at par with the mandi rates. Of course, we demanded selective harvesting and rejected fruits with blemishes.

Generally, contractors are well staffed and harvesting, sapping , washing, drying and packing 2 tons of fruits per day is feasible in a day. This may not be the case when procuring directly from the farmers as they may not be aware of the harvesting protocols. When you have a couple of tons of produce in your warehouse, daily inspection for rotten/overripe fruits is a must. It is labor intensive but important to reduce additional wastages. Green fruits with higher metabolic rate will ripen naturally, so its essential to grade them in time.

Fruits to be graded and washed

Washing in process  

We used Etherel to ripen our fruits. Unlike calcium carbide, it is considered safe and is in line with international standards. The down side of the former is that it takes more time. Nonetheless, we were willing to wait longer than compromise on the fruit quality. After the initial experiments, we concluded that fruits at 1ml/L concentration, when dipped for 3 minutes gave the best result and ripened in 3-4 days. The concentration was way off from the “recommended” dosage from “experts” online and in some of our horticulture institutes. Lesson learnt – do the trials yourself and ascertain what works for your crop.

Always pack green fruits in gift boxes because you do not know how long will the customer keep it in his possession before gifting it out. We packed at 80% ripeness, assuming that they will be consumed in a day or two. On the contrary, the customer kept it for 5 days in a locked room of Chennai heat. When he opened the box, it was not pleasing to the eyes.

Drying and packing 

All set to be loaded. 

Direct retailing is not easy. It is time consuming and you need a team to support the logistics and operations. We did some retailing in an IT park in Chennai and the experience was fairly good. One gets to interact with customers and also experience some strange incidents.There was one person who wanted to get a bill because he wanted to “bill” the expense to his IT contractor. There was another person who came rambling the next day, with an upset stomach, after consuming 3 kgs of mangoes in the entire course of day. Unfortunately, we did not have a remedy for him!

For the most part, many buyers do not have an idea on how to choose a good mango. Most picked up fruits that were attractive looking rather than right maturity for consumption. Sometimes, the novices would be accompanied by their “expert” friends who would view and smell every other fruit with a discerning eye, but eventually pick a fruit that would not do justice to their expertise. Once I told a person to pick a fruit that should have been well ripened but had some blemishes on the skin. He replied that he does not feel “satisfied” if he purchases fruits with light blemishes.  

You will also come across people who are determined to buy fruits accurate to the third decimal point. They will try all the permutation and combinations to get to that elusive 1 Kg mark. 

Overall, the entire exercise was successful, having established good supplier and customer base. We may repeat it next year if there is a need to procure more mangoes next year. If you have a farm within 200 km from Chennai, do drop us a mail at info@saverafarms.com .

Organisation Profile : Mango Nurseries

In the last couple of years, we have bought over 10,000 mango saplings from a couple of nurseries in Tamil Nadu. Although there are a lot of nurseries but only a handful have been in the business for generations. Like most businesses, new clients are established by word of mouth. When we were looking for suppliers, we were recommended a few well established, big nurseries in Salem and Dindigul.

If you think of a renowned nursery in Salem that has been in the business for over 3 generation, only one supplier would really fit the bill. We are not going to name the nursery. Unfortunately, our experience was not as stellar as their market reputation seems to be. In 2011, we were in the midst of developing our farm. After placing the order (and advance) with this nursery, we had to push out the pick up date by two weeks. We were repeatedly assured that our saplings were available and may be picked up at our convenience. However, at the time of pick up we were informed of a sudden storm / heavy monsoon which had damaged the saplings. Since our inception in 2010, we cannot recall any heavy or damaging monsoon activity and we called his bluff. Later we heard anecdotes that our saplings were sold to another client, possibly who was willing to pay more and pick it up right away. We did not do business with them again.

The second nursery we procured Mango saplings from is a few kilometers from Batlagundu in Dindigul district. We have been happy with the quality although we saw greater mortality in the bigger plants compared to the smaller ones. Based on subsequent discussions, we concluded that seed quality is key to a sapling's ability to endure field transplantation trauma. If possible, one should always try to check robustness of seed stock being used by the nursery. The proprietor of this nursery is easy to get along and so far has kept his word with quality and timely delivery. While the rates may tend to be pretty fixed and on the higher side, the travel distance was much shorter for us. Overall, we would recommend them.

Those of you who have procured saplings from other nurseries, feel free to share your feedback to benefit others. For specific questions on the above commentary, feel free to contact us directly.

Calling Mango Producers : Remove middlemen, sell to Savera Farms!

The summer of 2014 will herald the first season of Mangoes at Savera Farms. Given this is our first season and our plantation is still largely juvenile, we are not expecting a heavy yield but we are still excited. With close to 9,000 trees between our ultra-high density (UHD) and regular plantations, even the initial lower yields should result in several tonnes of fruit. Apart from readiness tasks around harvesting, a successful operation will require several time bound priorities post fruit picking and during distribution. A few such activities are listed below. For those looking to read up, here are a few public domain publications from Mexican and Filipino Mango producers.

• Initial Fruit Inspections
• Setup of Packaging house
• Fruit washing, sizing and labeling
• Hot-water / post water treatment
• Ripening
• Packing line
• Package design and sourcing
• Storage rooms
• Audit & record keeping

Each of these activities can become an operation in itself depending on processed volumes. Developing competency in these processes becomes critical if the goal is to attain high volumes and high margins. At the end of the day, each producer has to consider investing in these tasks based on their go-to-market channels and expected revenue.

At Savera Farms, premium Mango varieties include Imampasand, Alphonso and Bnaganpalli which are a mix of shy and heavy bearers. We have been fervently working to develop our go-to-market channels and direct (volume) customers. We also look at this as an opportunity to develop relationships with other Mango orchards and producers. If any producers have a mature Mango orchards and are looking for an alternative channel to sell their fruits, please contact us! Our preferred fruit procurement area is around Madurai, Chennai and Trichy but we would be happy to work with producers from other areas as well. Remove multiple layers of brokers, agents and middlemen who want to profit at the expense of the farmer-producer.

 

At Savera Farms, we look for long term purchase contracts and strongly prefer to work with direct producers and orchard owners. There are several opportunities and we are looking to team up with enthusiastic, motivated agri-preneurs who can become reliable suppliers. Contact us!

Disclaimer : Pictures are for reference and from public domain

Pruning Mango : Season 2

Our Imampasand and Alphonso mangoes turned 2 years this October. Most of them have already been pruned twice. With the onset of this years monsoons, the vegetative growth was accelerated and it was time to control the foliage and shape the canopy. The right canopy makes a difference in the trees ability to flower and later during fruiting during later years.

There are conflicting theories on whether to prune above or below the whorl, which is the inter-modal ring found in the branches. In traditional cultivation, the cut is made above the whorl to attain maximum shoots. In UHD, since the tree structure is smaller, it is important to control the shoots to avoid overcrowding. By cutting below the whorl, you would typically get 2-3 shoots which is ideal for UHD form of cultivation.

It is important that you allow enough sunlight to penetrate the foliage which involves pruning secondary branches present in the center of the plant. These branches will not bear fruit and you want to decrease non productive foliage as much as possible so that the necessary nutrition goes to the productive branches. Tertiary branches are typically found on the side of the canopy and are fruit bearing. It is imperative tertiary and above branches are not too long to avoid sagging of fruits and branches due to weight.

Before Pruning, with multiple secondary foliage.

After pruning, with healthy tertiary branches which will grow into multiple fruit bearing branches

Alphonso and Imampasand are both premium Mango varieties with wonderful texture and fragrance. With all the desirable qualities, these varieties do have a constraint since they are shy bearers. Not only is the annual fruit yield significantly less than Baiganphalli or Dusheri varieties but significant fruit yielding in these premium varieties often occurs in alternate year. Producers planning new orchards should take the expected yields into account and consider the right mix of heavy and shy fruit bearers.

Central Food Technological Research Institute (CFTRI), Mysore

A few weeks ago, we visited Central Food Technological Research Institute (CFTRI), Mysore to attend a course on Post Harvesting techniques of Fruits and Vegetables. CFTRI campus is in the heart of Mysore town and easily accessible. The building is elegant and was donated by the King of Mysore back in the days. Despite the urban setting, the campus is lush, green and very well kept.

Our course focused on several aspects of post harvest processes and techniques ranging from diseases & control measures, maturity standards, treatments for enhancing or reducing ripening, technologies related to Controlled Atmosphere (CA) and Modified Atmospheric Packaging (MAP). Discussions included Pesticide Residue analysis, Nutraceticals, Packaging design & performance evaluation, waste utilization of fruits, Irraditation technologies and HACCP standards for export purposes. The list of covered topics was comprehensive and provided a good overview over a large spectrum of activities. However after the topic was introduced, at times we were left yearning for more details and additional / contextual insights. Most lectures were theoretical in nature while there were a couple of  practical demos as well. For hands-on operators like us, a few more demos would have been very beneficial. We also felt at times professors had contrasting opinions on progressive technologies like MAP and its viability on fruits, especially Mango. It was a challenge to extract commercially pliable information from them as a lot of this data is still in research phase but the staff was usually tolerant of our relentless quest for practical details!

On a lighter note, I thought I was done with chemical equations for life after my first year engineering course. However, if you really want to understand the genesis of fruit spoilage, the equations/chemical phenomena will come back to haunt you. For me, it was a pleasant surprise to see some of the familiar equations again. Overall, the course provides a good baseline and understanding of fruit spoilage process and what should be done to curb the wastage. Any plans to introduce additional market driven, field tested and commercially applicable facets to this course will make it more attractive to existing operations. For additional details, contact CFTRI, Mysore.

Reader Poll : Direct to Consumer Model

Over the last couple of months, we have been studying multiple go-to-market approaches for some of our products. Marketing in an immature retail supply chain is never easy and India's business culture adds a few more twists to the equation. The winds of change are here though, the consumer is more savvy and discerning. To be successful, retailers will have to step up their game. Based on our limited survey in Chennai, the primary marketing challenges include :

1. Established supermarket chains like Food World and Nilgiris usually do not have independent producer friendly policies and transaction policies.
• Generally speaking, their retail model is geared towards established and heavily advertised brands. 
• Fees for promotional displays or activities can be prohibitive.
2. Producer to mandi to market supply chain remains strong and vicious. 
• The ubiquitous middleman continues to dilute operational efficiencies and sap profits.
• Current government programs to alleviate middleman malaise are generally limited in scope and impact.
3. End consumers are becoming more aware of their food content and source.
• Interest is organics in still small but slowly growing.
• Small, niche gourmet retailers are tasting success in urban settings.

Overall there is opportunity on multiple fronts each with aggressive growth projections  - retailing, packed supply chain, cold chain, packaging, production, etc. During our search we came across several start-ups in the food retailing space. Packaging innovation and niche food segments seems to be current drivers. We would like to poll the readers to better understand how valuable are the following purchase experiences for packed fruits (Mango, Sapota, Apples, etc) and packed meats (Fresh Chicken and Mutton).

- Competitive pricing with direct sales from producer.
- Direct shipment to your location in protective packaging.
- Convenient, clean, resealable storage cases.
- Repeat customer and volume incentives.
- Easy ordering options over phone, email or online.
- No hassle returns or exchanges.
- Published production location, process and information.

Please take a few moments to rate the importance of each factor in your potential purchase decision. Rate between 1 - 3, with 3 being most important. Looking forward to hearing back..