Apple orchards in India produce inferior quality fruit because of senile trees

In the course of the two-day National Apple Festival in Dehradun, it has been brought out that over 60% of apple orchards in India are producing inferior quality fruit and need to be replaced. In the opinion of experts, many of the apple trees in the country have grown too old to produce good quality fruit and this is, in turn, adversely impacting apple production.
This has been reported in timesofindia.indiatimes.com dated 18 September 2016.

As per estimates, out of 6.5-lakh hectares covered by apple orchards, almost 4 lakh hectares of land has senile trees and this is resulting in a year-on-year reduction in apple production since the last one decade.
In 2013, the Union government had launched a scheme to motivate farmers to replace old trees with new ones by giving them an incentive. The amount of Rs 351 per tree that was offered to uproot an old tree to plant a fresh one was considered as inadequate by many of the farmers and, hence, the scheme was not attractive and did not have many takers.
In the opinion of experts, the government should uproot all apple trees which were over 50 years old. Apple production can multiply within three years of uprooting all the old trees because the new variety of plants start to produce fruits from the third year of plantation. Only, the government has to support the farmers in the gestation period by providing them alternate sources of livelihood.


Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org


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