The king of fruits from Odisha will now reign over markets in Delhi, thanks to the efforts of Directorate of Horticulture, that has stared branding and marketing mangoes in the national Capital.
With Delhites relishing sweet mangoes from Odisha, over 32 quintals of ripe mangoes were despatched on Tuesday.
Those will be available in Mother Diary sales counter. Varieties of mango like Mallika, Amrapalli and Langra have been shipped by Amritsar Express in the first lot to Mother Dairy, New Delhi.
Packed in 233 cartoons,each cartoon weighing around 14 kg approximately, they will be available in sales counters.
The next lot will be shipped on May 31 from other farmers of the selected villages. The farmers are expecting a net income of Rs 40 lakh only this year by marketing to Mother Dairy only.
Getting encouraged by such ventures, other farmers are also now coming forward to market their fruits through Mother Dairy or similar organisations, said BK Upadhyaya, Director Horticulture.
In fact mango is the major fruit crop in Sambalpur district and is grown in around 6,500 hectares of land.Out of this area, 4,500 hectares have fruit bearing orchards and rest are yet to bear as those are young orchards.
This year, extensive efforts have been made towards marketing of mango for the farmers in the district.
A special event named ‘Sambalpur Mango Festival’ has been opened on May 27 at Jail Chowk, Sambalpur and the Collector, Sambalpur, Subham Saxena has inaugurated the festival which will continue for 15 days where mango farmers will sale their fruits in 14 stalls directly to the consumers.
This will help in getting better price for the farmers as they used to sale to either wholesalers or traders at a very meagre price.
Further, a marketing tie up has been made with Mother Dairy, New Delhi through ORMAS, Sambalpur.
Representatives of Mother Dairy have extensively surveyed some villages in Kuchinda block of the district and have selected 1,836 plants of 38 farmers in Kulanjore and Thianal village of Tainsar Gram Panchayat who will supply around 1,000 quintals of mango fruits to Mother Dairy this year.
Interestingly the plantations were developed in a FRA lands under MGNREGS by the Horticulture Department during 2012-13.The Mother Dairy representatives expressed deep satisfaction in the quality of the mangoes.