India witnesses huge demand for the ‘queen of mangoes’
Noor jahan mango (Video grab)
By:
Pramod Kumar
INDIA’s ‘queen of mangoes’ is getting huge demand from across the country which pushed the price of the fruit to about Rs 1,500 (£15) each for a typical 5kg example, reported The Times.
Ideal weather and sustained demand are driving the prices up, the report added.
Named after a Mughal empress, the Noor Jahan mango is grown in Madhya Pradesh in central India, and is as big as a pumpkin.
Last year caterpillars devoured the fruit and n a previous year the fruit weighed in at a feeble 2kg.
The variety is grown in only a few orchards on exceptionally old trees. It is believed to have originated in Afghanistan but is named after the 20th and last wife of the Mughal emperor Jahangir who ruled India in the 17th century, the report further said.
Officials in the Alirajpur district of Madhya Pradesh have talked of applying for unique status similar to that enjoyed by basmati rice and Darjeeling tea.
Although prized for its size and sweetness, the noor jahan is seen by no means all Indians as the best mango. There are 700 varieties of the fruit in the country. Its texture, taste, aroma and colour are debated with intensity, along with the “terroir” of the orchard or region.
You will not, for example, find a lover of the alphonso mango, stooping to touch anything so portly as the noor jahan.
The alphonso mango, famed for its delicate taste and ambrosial fragrance, claims the status of a Château Lafite Rothschild.
Less-elevated varieties, such as the dussehri, langra or kesar, are deemed by alphonso lovers to be the Blue Nuns of the mango world, The Times report noted.
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