By: Rakesh Lohumi (Sr. Editor-ICN GROUP)
SHIMLA: A consequence of the fast degrading hill environment, the changing weather pattern is posing a serious threat to apple, a premium fruit crop of Himalayan hills which brought prosperity to the state of Himachal Pradesh.
With snow becoming increasingly scarce and winters getting warmer by the year the apple is on the decline. Snow is considered as “white manure” for the orchards as it not only ensures minimum chilling hours also helps to maintain adequate soil moisture in the precipitous hill terrain.
Climate change is indeed a global phenomenon but its impact has been accentuated in the region due to manmade factors manmade factors like indiscriminate destruction of green cover, excessive constructions and extension of human activities to highly eco-sensitive high altitude areas.
The hills have a limited carrying capacity due to topographical constraints and they cannot support large human populations. However, in states like Himachal steep slopes have been over burdened with monstrous constructions and large tracts of lush green have been virtually transformed into concrete jungles.
All this has taken a heavy toll of the fragile hill environment with irreversible implications for the microclimate as evident from the widening gap between the maximum and minimum temperatures (diurnal variations) and abnormal rise average temperatures.
For instance, during the current winter the minimum temperature in Shimla hovered between 10 C and 12 C as against the normal of 5 C to 6 C until Christmas when a light snowfall broke the four-month long dry spell. There has been no precipitation since the withdrawal of monsoon and the deficiency up to December 25 was as high as 91 percent.
Warm winters in hills have become a regular feature and the seasonal snowline is retreating as a consequence. Three decades ago snowfall extended to areas up to an altitude of 4000 ft but nowadays even areas up to 7000 ft hardly receive any snow. In recent years even places like Shimla have been frequently experiencing snowless winters.
The impact is already discernible in fluctuating production and declining productivity. The total apple production in the state this year came down to 2.65 crore standard boxes (20 kg each) from last year’s output of 3.77 crore boxes. The state recorded the all time high production of 4.46 crore boxes in 2010, which was an aberration, as the very next year it plunged to 1.38 crore boxes. The average production has been hovering around 3 crore boxes even as the area under apple increased to 1.10,000 hectare from 1, 01,000 hectare over the past six years.
Farmers in mid-hills and higher hills switched over to horticulture and took to apple cultivation in a big way as the mountainous terrain is not suitable for growing agricultural crops due to topographical constraints. The fruit was introduced in the state in 1916 (exactly one hundred years ago) by Satyanand (Samuel Evans) Stokes, an American who had settled in Kotgarh but the apple revolution started only after Independence. It turned out to be a boon, bringing prosperity to the hill people who have been languishing in poverty all these years.
Remunerative returns from apple made the small land holdings in hill economically viable and it became the mainstay of the people over a short period of time. The area under the fruit shot up from 26,000 hectare in 1970 to 92,820 hectare in 2001.
However, productivity, which ranged between 9 and 10 tonne per hectare three decades ago, declined to 6 tonne per hectare. In the last six years the average yield has been even lower, around 5 tonne per hectare. Productivity in the developed world, particularly, New Zealand, America and European countries, ranges from 60 to 70 tonne per hectare.
The orchards in lower elevations (5000 ft to 6500 ft) are the worst affected due to retreating seasonal snow cover as the chilling requirement of 1600 to 2000 hours , during which mercury should remain below 7 C, is not met. The growers have mostly switched over to other crops and the lower hills now contribute only about 10 to 12 percent to the total outturn as against 25 to 30 percent three decades ago.
The mid hills have also been severely affected and as a result the production fluctuates widely. The production is more or less normal in the high hills (above 8000 ft), which are relatively unaffected by the changing weather pattern.
Apple accounts for almost 50 percent of the total area under fruit crops and 85 percents of total fruit production in the state. Despite the low levels of productivity the size of the Apple economy is estimated to be around Rs 3,600 crore which is very significant for the hill state. Apple accounts for almost 50 percent of the total area under fruit crops and 85 percent of total fruit production of the state.
As apple has been the main stay of the farmers in the mid hill and higher hill areas the government is taking steps to combat the impact of climate change and improve productivity. A Rs 1173 crore world bank-aided project is being implemented under which rootstock of high yielding varieties is being imported and irrigation facility developed through water rain water harvesting.
The imported rootstock it requires assured irrigation and it has not done well in the past. The hills face perennial shortage of water and there and people in the apple belt even lack adequate drinking water. Harvesting of rain water may not be possible as not only snow but the quantum of monsoon rain is also declining. Moreover, the soil in hills is not deep like the developed countries from where rootstock is being imported. With the rising temperatures even the higher hills vulnerable to plant diseases making orchard management more and more expensive. The warm climate is conducive to the growth of pathogens.
A redeeming feature is that some progressive growers have using innovative techniques of and switching over to low-chilling dwarf varieties to deal with the changing climate. Prem Singh Chauhan, a progressive grower of village Jaltahar in Kotkhai, has after years of experimentation with imported and indigenous rootstocks developed a new variety of apple with a better colour, improved size and longer shelf life. He has gone for with ultra high density plantation, over 10,000 plants per hectare as against 250 to 275 plants per hectare in traditional orchards and 2500 plant per hectare in high density orchards. He has evolved his own innovative techniques of grafting and pruning methods, which allow plants to grow only vertically up to a maximum of 8 ft, to maximise yield. He is producing more than 2500 boxes from his one hectare orchard as against the normal output of 250-500 boxes per hectare.
However, it is a long drawn and expensive exercise to replace the old plantations which served well for over 60 to 70 years and still bearing fruit. Moreover, the life of the new varieties is only around 15 years and as such the orchards will have to be replanted again and again. It will take a few years to assess how these varieties perform in the Himalayan environment and a few decades to evaluate the cost-benefit ratio.
