This isn't a strobbery

As farmers across India take to growing the American fruit in regions you wouldn’t imagine would support its cultivation, OG strawberry cultivators in Mahabaleshwar feel the heat

It's a forbidden fruit in India…unless you are in the hilly slopes of Mahabaleshwar. Not many outside would dare grow the red, succulent strawberries a few years ago. Naturally so. This seasonal American fruit requires temperate climate to thrive, and isn’t happy in sub-tropical India. Law graduate Gurleen Chawla, however, has challenged the tradition.

Jhansi-based Chawla, 23, was one among many whose American dream was cut short when the Coronavirus pandemic hit. With a law degree from Pune, she was to fly to the States, but the grants were stopped and visa procedures closed. She returned to her home in Bundelkhand. “Two days before the nationwide lockdown, in abundant spare time, I noticed that my parents had started growing strawberries on our terrace garden. After harvesting, when I tried the first batch of the fruit, it tasted good,” Chawla recalls.

Gurleen Chawla is known to have started a strawberry revolution in Jhansi after she first attempted to grow the fruit in Bundelkhand. She also found a mention in the Prime Minister’s latest Mann Ki Baat episode 

A few weeks later, she convinced her father to lend her the 1.5 acre vacant land close to home. “I took help from organic farming consultants, some even came down to do a soil test. Jhansi is a water-parched region. Strawberries require very little water to grow, and that worked for me.”
 
Producing them in hotter climate conditions was a risk Chawla was willing to take. Strawberry requires a well-drained medium loam soil, rich in organic matter. The soil should be slightly acidic with pH from 5.7 to 6.5. At higher pH root, the formation is poor. The presence of excessive calcium in the soil causes yellowing of the leaves. In light soil and in those rich in organic matter, runner formation is better. After bringing in seedlings from Mahabaleshwar, Chawla planted them amid temperatures fluctuating between 25 and 26 degrees Celsius in November last year. On December 25, the first batch of fruit was ready. “It was surreal. I didn’t think I could do it. We were very cautious at the start when watering them. I think making every fruit survive was our biggest challenge. They tasted delicious, just like in Mahabaleshwar,” she adds.

Bansri Shah owns a three-acre land in Mahabaleshwar, where she grows strawberries, among other fruits. The lockdown, however, affected her business

Today, Chawla has about 20,000 plants, and plucks 70 to 80 kg strawberries per day. “But, I sell them at a very low cost. People in Jhansi still think they are litchis; the concept of growing or even eating strawberries is alien. When popularity grew, I started Jhansi Organics, an online portal from where you can order the fruit and get it delivered across Jhansi.”

Chawla even started a month-long strawberry festival in association with the Uttar Pradesh government. UP CM Yogi Adityanath felicitated her for starting a “strawberry revolution” in Bundelkhand. Her efforts found mention in the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent Mann Ki Baat episode.

Shah is trying the hydroponic farming method to grow the fruit at her Walkeshwar home basement

There are many like Chawla who are taking the plunge in oddball parts of the country. Shashidhar Chikkappa Goravar, 45, is a progressive farmer based in Dharwad district of Karnataka. The visually arresting farm he built in 2019 in Hullambi village is covered with green foliage and the red-coloured fruit. After training at farms in Mahabaleshwar, he returned home with organic plant stimulants and top-quality fertilizers. “There were lows and highs, I experimented a lot with the soil. Today, I have over 30,000 plants in my farm. I grow them in one planting cycle, from September to December. This is when the climate in Dharwad is slightly pleasant; in the night, it touches 13 degrees Celsius if we are lucky. The demand for my produce is obviously not as much as it is for those grown in Mahabaleshwar, but I am happy,” adds Goravar adds, who plans to open a training institute to popularise berry farming in Dharwad.
 
In the 1920s, this good-looking red fruit took Mahabaleshwar by storm. Mahabaleshwar was the perfect summer getaway for the Bombay province during the British Raj. Located 120 km from Pune and 250 km from Mumbai, this resort town, situated on a plateau, is where the British Governor enjoyed staying once a year. Labourers grew strawberries on farmlands, and after the British left, the locals took interest in the fruit. In 1992 came a strawberry revolution. “The then Maharashtra chief minister Sharad Pawar visited the hill station and heard the farmers’ woes. We knew how to grow the fruit, but didn’t have saplings. So he ordered about 25,000 from California and strawberry farming started gaining ground. Earlier, potatoes were grown in abundance here. But now, Mahabaleshwar accounts for 80 per cent strawberry cultivation in India,” informs Bhalasaheb Bhilare, president of the Strawberry Grower Association of India.

Shashidhar Goravar started farming in the hot district of Dharwad, despite failed stories of growing the fruit in the region

In fact, the town is so famous for its strawberries that it was bestowed with the Geographical Indication (GI) tag in 2010.

Currently, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the business. Walkeshwar-based Bansri Shah, 26, whose grandfather owns a three-acre plot in Mahabaleshwar, says, “During the lockdown, we didn’t end up selling it to customers. In order to get rid of the supplies we were stuck with, we used to feed strawberries to cows and even buried tons of harvest. It was also difficult to transport seeds from California. Farmers were not able to send the harvest from Mahabaleshwar to cities. Later, the extended monsoon which led to heavy rainfall during September and early October adversely affected the fruit quality as well as output.”

Bhalasaheb Bhilare, president, Strawberry Grower Association of India, on how Mahabaleshwar accounts for 80 per cent of India's cultivation

The young restaurateur of Bomberry and organic greengrocer has now taken to a new form of growing the fruit in humid Mumbai. “I had read about hydroponic farms and it had really caught my interest as it includes zero pesticides, saves a large amount of water and has a higher amount of nutrient control. I first started growing basil, different types of lettuce, sweet chard and oakleaf, in small quantities, in our basement. When we got a positive response, we tried it with a strawberry plant from our farms. Trying to fit the weather conditions of Mahabaleshwar and grow the berry in a hydroponic setup did not work out at first go. We are definitely going to give it another shot. If it works, we will be able to grow strawberries even in the monsoons here,” Shah beams.

But Bhilare doesn’t think the fruit can be or rather should be grown anywhere else in India. “We, too, adopt newer techniques here in Mahabaleshwar, but this is the original place where the fruit was planted. I don’t think if you grow them anywhere else, the quality will be the same. Take grapes, for instance. Do you think you will ever find Sangli’s grape quality elsewhere  in India?”
 
Entrepreneur Ruchi Jain of Taru Naturals chooses to differ. She sources dried strawberries from a farm in Uttarakhand. “It is very rare to bring in the fruit from there. Usually, restaurants prefer the Mahabaleshwar stock. We obviously weighed the pros and cons, and then decided to go for this one. They last throughout the year, and it’s a high value crop.”

Strawberries make excellent ice cream and jam on account of their rich aroma, and are also a good source of vitamin C. It is a soft and highly perishable fruit, often shipped in frozen condition within India and to Western countries. In the year 2020-2021 (April to November), India exported supplies worth of $32.24 million. And maybe this is why the government is encouraging farmers to take interest in the fruit.

Babu Rajasekharan is an enterprising young man from Udagamandalam, popularly known as Ooty. After working in the IT sector, he decided to take the love for plants seriously. In 2015, Rajasekharan started out with 3,000 saplings of strawberries that were grown in a poly house, across a 1.5 acre patch of land near the Mukurthi National Park. “It is a short day plant, which requires exposure to about 10 days of less than eight hours sunshine for initiation of flowering. In winter, the plants do not make any growth and remain dormant. The exposure to low temperature during this period helps in breaking the dormancy of the plant. Later on, when the days become longer and the temperature rises, the plants resume growth and begin flowering. I had to do a lot of research and experiments before I started growing them here. If I can do it here, anyone can across India.”

Rajasekharan suggests maintaining personal contact with each plant before it reaches fruition. “It is important to grow them in smaller batches, because this way, you can see every sapling grow into a fruit. If early ripening happens, on a commercial level, it can be a major economical setback to the farmer. I always plant it in small quantities, so that I can pay attention while they grow.”

Rajasekharan has welcomed the growing interest in the fruit. “Grow it if you have the passion for it. Accurate climatic conditions are definitely important to produce strawberries, but what they need more is a green manured field and a lot of attention.”

5.7 to 6.5 ph
Acidity levels required in soil for growing strawberry

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