Farmer grows winter fruit in sandy soil to a delicious outcome
Haresh Thakkar with his produce
Mumbai will soon get to taste delicious strawberries from the Kutch region of Gujarat. Haresh Thakkar, a strawberry farmer, is doing the impossible, cultivating the fruit in a 7.5 acre-land in Reldi village in the Kutch district. In India, strawberries are primarily cultivated in Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Delhi, Hariyana, Punjab and Rajasthan.
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Kutch’s sandy soil is not conducive to grow strawberries. But, Thakkar decided to experiment on a patch of farmland, which he and his brothers purchased in the 1990s. “We visited Lonavla in 2020-2021 and bought 30,000 strawberry plants. We planted these plants on our farm in Kutch, during the winter months. I used the Israeli model of irrigation, and also watched a lot YouTube videos. Strawberries need very little water,” Thakkar explained.
His experiments bore great results. “In Maharashtra, the fruit weighs 8-30 gm, while mine are 10-90 gm. Our strawberries are also a lot tastier.” He has already started selling his strawberries in Ahmedabad, Rajkot and Surat, and is getting requests from Mumbai as well.
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