A USDA Foreign Agricultural Service report has predicted India’s production of fresh fruit will rise 6 per cent in 2008/09 (July-June) to 66.63m tonnes, and says production has risen 51 per cent since 1995/96.
India has 5.8m hectares of land under production in 2007/08, a figure that has been steadily rising for years.
The report also pegged the country’s 2007/08 (April-March) fruit imports at 77,450 tonnes, of which apples were about 75 per cent.
Fresh fruit imports have risen 826 per cent since 2000/01, and are dominated to the tune of 85 per cent by temperate fruits.
Indian consumers spend just 4 per cent of their monthly food expenditure on fresh fruit, the report says, but consumption levels have been rising in line with Indian income growth.
Tropical fruits produced domestically were consumed in much larger volumes than temperate fruit, due to price and availability. Indian consumers in 2006/07 bought an average 19kg of bananas a year each, compared to only 1.5kg of apples a year, according to the report.
