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By Anitha Pailoor Once there were thousands of varieties of appemidi, the tender mango that is at the heart of Karnataka's food culture and mango pickles. Now, with the forests being felled, there are only a few hundred varieties left. A unique festival in Karnataka, visited by 6,000 people, celebrated the appemidi and made a strong statement for its conservation
 A whole festival devoted to ‘appemidi’or the tender mango? Over 6,000 people visiting the festival and discussing everything from the health benefits of the mango to market options, gene banks to conserve the tender mango’s diversity and social security for the harvesters who risk their lives plucking the fruit? Over 500 appemidi varieties displayed, along with an array of pickles and other dishes? Midi Mavu 07, the tender mango festival held recently in Sagar, Shimoga district, Karnataka, celebrated the appemidi. It was also a bid to save it.
The appemidi is not just any old mango. It is at the heart of the mango pickle industry and Karnataka’s food culture. Its fragrance is so strong that adding just a few midis to an ordinary mango pickle can change its taste and smell. Among the tens of varieties of mango pickle, appemidi pickles are the most sought after as they remain fresh for years. In the land of their origin, appemidis are also used to make gojju, sasve, appehuli, chutney and thambli, which is a good digestive.  The appemidi is a native of the forests of the Western Ghats, where there are natural plantations of centuries-old mango trees in the valleys of the Aghanashini, Kumudvati, Kali, Varada, Bedthi and Sharavathi rivers in Uttara Kannada and Shimoga districts. The trees are also found in places like Chittoor and Khanapur in Belgaum and parts of Chikmagaloor district.
A wild appemidi tree can yield several tonnes of tender mango, with features varying from tree to tree. The appemidi can have as many names as its diversity demands. But being a soft-wood variety, the appemidi treeis ideally suited for building fishing boats. In the last five decades, the forests in the area have been cut down to make way for hydroelectric projects and construction, and for timber. In the process, thousands of appemidi trees have been felled. Most yielding trees are over 100 years old. They normally branch out to a height of 25 feet, although in some cases they can grow as tall as 80 feet. Harvesting tender mangoes requires great skill; the person has to move carefully through the branches, plucking mangoes with long stalks. Since skilled harvesters are now ageing, harvesting has become a problem. Increasing demand has spurred many locals to cut branches off in order to make the work easy and quick. Repeated harvests could cause the tree to die. One of the organisers of the festival, Shivanada Kalave, who has traced and documented around 300 appemidi varieties, says conserving the trees is not easy. According to him, there are now only a few hundred appemidi varieties left, down from thousands of varieties. Malanji Appe, a huge appemidi tree near Sirsi in Uttara Kannada, survives and thrives, and has had regular customers from three neighbouring districts for over 50 years. Every year, demand for its mangoes increases. Two years ago, the 60-year-old tree fetched its owners a record Rs 40,000. It has become so popular that the owners have been forced to set up a distribution system for its fruit. Anantha Bhattana appemidi, Genasinakuni Jeerige and Haladotaappeare sought after appemidi varieties. Although supply decreased, demand for this variety of mango has spiralled. Ripponpete market in Shimoga sees a turnover of several lakhs of rupees during the months of March and April. A good quality tender mango costs Rs 1-1.50; the price for a quintal could go up to almost Rs 6,000, depending on demand and availability. Since the supply of appemidi meets only one-tenth of demand in the market, they are often mixed in with ordinary tender mangoes. Ganesh Kakal, of Kakal Pickles, has planted 150 grafted appemidi plants on his five-acre plot of land to meet the growing demand. Because of short supply, appemidi pickle accounts for only 6% of the Kakal factory’s total pickle production. M Ramachandra Shetty of M N Pickles in Shiralakoppa, which has first-of-its-kind mobile outlets, prefers other varieties of tender mango as they are more readily available than appemidi. “Once they get the taste, customers usually stick to appemidi pickle. I can’t supply them throughout the year considering the short supply of raw material. A few years ago, I started exporting appemidi pickle. It went on for three years but I didn’t have the stock for the fourth year,” he says. The need of the hour, he adds, is to conserve appemidi trees and multiply yields.
The first customers for appemidi are household pickle-makers. Pickle-making has become a virtual home industry in the last decade. Pampavati, a farmer near Sagar, took to selling pickle when arecanut rates slumped five years ago. It now adds to her family income. Poornaprajna Belur, who has observed the pickle industry in Sagar and Ripponpete, says that over 100 farm households are engaged in making pickle, producing around 100 tonnes a year. Home producers supply pickle in simple glass jars. No plastics for the appemidi. An eight-member family in Sagar requires around seven to eight such jars per annum. These homemade pickles have no artificial preservatives; the mango latex itself gives the pickle a shelf life of around four years. Gangamma was astonished by the demand for her pickle at the fair. “Fifty kilos of pickle that I brought in the morning were sold out before noon. Even tender mangoes in brine are sought after. Many people were unaware that I was into this. Thanks to the fair my customers have increased,” she said. Household pickle-makers like Gangamma usually don’t sport a brand name; they sell their wares by word of mouth. Most start with tender mangoes from the trees in their backyard, eventually buying from the market to meet demand. Enthusiasts like G Prabhakara have even experimented with new appemidi preparations such as chocolate, juice, jam and squash... Several individual and group activities such as exchange programmes and appemidi fairs and festivals have helped keep the local passion for appemidi alive. Efforts to restore endangered varieties were first initiated 50 years ago in Siddapur. Dantkal Ganesh Hegde pioneered the grafting of appemidi by planting 25 grafted Anantha Bhattana appe plants on his farm. So, when the original tree died, the hundreds of people who gathered had a reason to feel good. A grafted plant begins yielding during the sixth year, and the yield increases as the tree grows older. Hegde Subba Rao, a grafting expert in Sagar, has collected 70 appemidi varieties within a 50-km radius of Sagar in the last eight months. A festival similar to Midi Mavu 07 was organised in Sirsi, Uttara Kannada, last April, where 290 varieties of appemidi were on display. A newsletter on appemidi was also brought out for the occasion. Regular events and continuous follow-up with a group of ‘grafts men’ and appemidi lovers have helped the campaign make a significant impact. K V Lakshminarayana Hegde, host of Midi Mavu 07, was overwhelmed by the event’s success and has decided to hold the festival next year too. (Anitha Pailoor is a development journalist based in Dharwad) InfoChange News & Features, May 2007 |
