Malformation, pests and water shortage: The mango meltdown in Sindh

It was a sultry summer morning. Mir Shah Mohammad Talpur was visiting his sprawling mango orchards, located on the outskirts of Hyderabad, to inspect the year’s produce. However, the ruthless sun glaring on his back and mercury rising to 43.2 degrees Celsius were making things difficult for Mir.

For the mangoes, though, these climatic conditions were in tandem with their harvest.

Mir’s orchard is spread across 450 acres of land. “I have been looking after the bagh for years … many trees here are around 50 years old,” he told Dawn.com. The 49-year-old wore a black sun cap along with a neck flap to avoid exposure to the intense heat.

Like many in the area, Mir too sublets his mango orchard — a practice in vogue, by and large, in Sindh. Only a few growers, including those who believe in progressive farming, manage their own orchards. The province is known for its Sindhri mangoes, harvested in the first week of June.

Despite other varieties such as Saroli, Dasehri and Langra, which are harvested as early as mid-May, Sindhri remains the most preferred choice of mango lovers. It is not just an export favourite, but also used as a ‘seasonal gift’ by politicians and top-level government functionaries.

“This time, Sindhri is being picked quite early thanks to the market dynamics,” said Mir. “The falling of the fruit from trees indicates that it is now ripe and ready for harvest.” For this year’s harvest, he signed an agreement with Haji Ramazan Siyal, a contractor from Multan.

From trees to plates

At Mir’s orchard, labourers from Punjab, who routinely cross over to this side of the provincial border during the season, are busy with various chores — climbing trees to pluck mangoes, sorting the fruits for export consignments and local market consumption, and cooking food.

These labourers — many of them hailing from southern Punjab’s districts of Muzaffargarh, Layyah, Dera Ghazi Khan and Multan — stay in the orchards for over a month until the end of the harvesting season and the subsequent marketing.

They then leave for Punjab, where harvesting begins relatively late. These workers have expertise in preparing bardana (wooden boxes), bharawa (filling of mangoes in boxes), thukawa (packing of mangoes) and turawa (plucking). Their dexterity is on show as they swiftly move through the orchards.

Picking of mangoes is conventionally known as ‘pattaee’ in the Sindhi language. A few farm workers climb the trees, while others stand underneath with polypropylene bags in their hands. These specific bags are used to ensure that not a single mango touches the earth below, which can damage the shape and quality of the king of fruits.

The mangoes plucked thus far are collected at a separate location to make a mound of them before they are graded. The ubiquitous sweet smell of unripe mangoes pervades this part of the orchard.

Shift from conventional to modern ways

At Mir’s farm, however, Siyal’s labourers, including his young son, Mudassir Siyal, have shifted away from conventional harvesting or pattaee. Instead, they pick every mango in a small bag, whose edge is fixed with a sharp cutter. This process reduces the labour, because the fruit is collected in a basket and then shifted for manual sorting and grading.

“I feel the fruit suffers shock inside in the pattaee way of harvesting,” says Mir, seated under the canopy shade of an old mango tree. “This year, labourers are clearing trees in quite an efficient way to avoid losses.” Soon, Siyal’s men bring out servings of mangoes.

According to Siyal, Mir’s orchard needs massive pruning of stems to let sunlight and air pass through easily. “I have given some advice to Mir saheb on how to cut large branches of trees that are at present entangled considerably. It should be done across the orchard,” he says.

“I started working as a labourer to climb trees for picking mangoes, and then went on to become a contractor. I bought my first bagh in the early 1970s for Rs30,000 and now my son works with me,” he adds.

The contractor provides high-quality mangoes to exporters, besides selling them in domestic wholesale markets across Sindh, under a business deal for export to Iran. Each carton invariably carries eight to nine kilogrammes of mangoes. Exporters usually arrive in orchards after contacting contractors, while some are now working as orchard contractors themselves.

However, many growers avoid managing orchards themselves. “Handling a mango orchard and then marketing the fruit is not everyone’s cup of tea,” said Nadeem Shah, who owns an orchard in Matiari. “I tried managing it sometime back, but then backed out. It’s a tricky business that I find difficult to deal with.”

Threat to mangoes

The acreage of mango orchards has dwindled in the last five years, from 59,100 hectares in 2019-20 to 58,900 hectares in 2023-24. Mango production, however, showed a slight increase from 329,300 tonnes in 2019-20 and 387,200 tonnes in 2023-24. These figures, however, present a dismal picture when compared to a decade ago, when the acreage stood at 63,144 hectares with production of 402,514 tonnes, according to data from the Sindh agriculture department.

Mango producers fear that the fruit’s production will drop considerably this year due to various factors. Earlier this year, mangoes suffered shocks apparently due to climate change-driven weather patterns. Severe water shortage at critical stages of flowering and fruiting in February and March was another major factor that affected the mango crop.

The water shortage has also affected Mir’s mango orchards. “Look at the size of the mango … it’s 970 grams, but this could have been more than 1,000 grams or even closer to 1,100 grams if we provided water to the orchard before harvesting,” he lamented. Watering trees before plucking makes the land underneath marshy, thus restricting the mobility of workers.

If this was not enough, a disease called malformation and a pest known as hopper damaged the crop. It was again followed by substantial damages due to powerful wind storms that visited Hyderabad, Tando Allahyar and Mirpurkhas — hub of mango production — causing massive dropping of unripe mangoes. Some signs of malformed flowers were still present in the trees.

Malformation is a disease, and growers can only control it by removing the malformed flowers as soon as they appear in the trees. According to Mahmood Nawaz Shah, a progressive grower and Sindh Abadgar Board (SAB) president, hopper is most lethal at the time of flowering.

“For the last few years, hopper attacks have become quite common. We don’t get research-oriented and evidence-based advice from the agriculture department on how to deal with it,” he regrets.

‘Axe to grind’

Zulfiqar Ali Kachelo has inherited a hefty legacy of the mango farming business in the lower Sindh region. He is a member of the fifth-generation Kachelo family, running the mango orchard trade and diversifying it from conventional trade to e-commerce. Ali’s family cumulatively owns a couple of thousand acres of mango farms in Mirpurkhas.

“I primarily stand for managing orchards myself, as it helps grow the local area’s economy,” he told Dawn.com. “We need to train local farm workers instead of relying on their counterparts from parts of the country.” He also sublets his farm, but on an alternative basis. “If I let out some part of the orchard to a contractor some year, the next year I handle it myself, which helps me learn the trade dynamics and trends.”

The issues of malformation and pests are affecting farms regularly, he said. “And we find no solution for it at the government level. The only activity the government is associated with is an annual mango festival with no productive discourse being seen there except for routine mango season’s celebrations,” he criticises.

So, he lamented, the growers depend on their own wisdom or the private sector. “But then the private sector has its axe to grind,” he said, adding that the government’s support for mango orchards, by and large, is almost zero.

SAB’s Nawaz concurred that the government’s support for farmers when it came to tackling diseases was missing. For the past three years, consistent pest attacks along with malformation have been witnessed, making farmers following progressive farm protocols extraordinarily cautious.

“They regularly used sprays to control these issues,” he says, recalling that when malformation was reported in 2023, it caused substantial losses — 20pc to 25pc in the overall mango production.

“Learning from the past, these farmers had somewhat better control in 2024,” Nawaz says. “This year again, malformation was quite massive. Growers having some knowledge applied the required sprays, but those lacking awareness lagged and suffered losses.”

This is the reason why mangoes remain undersized. The incidence of pest attack was also quite evident on the fruit in terms of its quality.

For now, however, Sindh’s mangoes continue their journey — from branches to plates and gift boxes — bringing a touch of sweetness that makes the sweltering summer heat a little more bearable. Across the board, there’s agreement: mangoes, in all their forms, sizes, and flavours, are the season’s greatest joy. But if the pressing issues plaguing mango production are not urgently addressed, we may soon risk losing the king of fruits.

Header image: A worker carries mangoes in a basket after plucking them from trees. — All photos by Umair Ali