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Special gift from Bhagalpur has arrived at national capital mainly for the president of Indian and other senior signatories but the senders are not satisfied with the quality mainly the size of their gift items this time!

‘Bhagalpur ki saugat’ (gift from Bhagalpur), consignment of delicious Jardalu, a special mango variety with aroma today reached New Delhi which are scheduled to distribute among President of India, prime minister and other senior dignitaries in the capital of the country.

Like silk Bhagalpur is  known for Jardalu mango and as per the tradition rather could be said as a part of goodwill gesture on the part of government of Bihar every year the presidents along with other senior VVIPs in New Delhi are gifted with the delicious mangoes, particularly the Jardalus.

Delicious mangoes at Choudhary’s orchard.

Bipin Kumar, in-charge officer of Bihar Bhavan, New Delhi today has received a total of 1,024 gift boxes of Jardalu mangoes for VVIPs which earlier was dispatched from here by district administration. But this time the size of the mangoes are not ‘satisfactory’ as the adverse weather conditions hampered the much prospect of Jardalu of Bhagalpur.

Though for Bhagalpur sending Jardalu mangoes to national capital and well as to Patna became a tradition but the rapid change in the climatic conditions emerge as major hurdle for maintaining the quality of Jardalu.

“This time really we had to face immense difficulty  mainly to choose  larger size mangoes for the consignment to VVIPs as untimely rains leading to temperature variation has affected the size adversely”, said a local official at Bhagalpur. In 2016, there was a break in the custom of sending Jardalu gift packs to VVIPs owing to  shortage in the production of  sufficient quantity of quality fruit. Adversity of Nature hold responsible for such incident.

Mango Exhibition before sending the gifts to VVIPs at the national capital.

It is worth mentioning that the orchards located in the western parts of Bhagalpur mainly places like Akbarnagar and Sultanganj uses to provide the suitable Jardalu for VVIPs gifting because those areas have the potentialities to produce such good variety of Jardalu both in quality and size wise in comparison to other Jardalu variety which produce elsewhere in the district.

A source from district horticulture department,  even though the overall mango production in the district this year was not expected be bumper; as it was in 2015, it would be much better as compared to the previous year. The department estimated total mango production in the district this time likely to be above 80,000 tons.

Ashok Chowdhry, president of the Bihar mango growers’ association and recipient of Bihar’s Krishan Shree by the state government popularly known as Mango man, is also the main supplier of the gift item for national capital. Owner of Madhuvan orchard at Tilakpur village beside NH-80 at Akbarnagar, said this time out of total 100 quintals of Jardalu, 80 quintals of mango of good size and quality was selected for gift packs. He too blamed untimely rains which was responsible for the  temperature fluctuation, one of the main reason for damage Jardalu prospective.

Sources from Bihar Agricultural University, Sabour said early rain, such as in the month of March this year, had caused ‘mango blossom blight’, a fungal disease that adversely hit flowering in mid and late varieties of Jardalu.

It further said that though growers could control the disease by chemical treatment, the adverse effect of the disease during the flowering stage was expected to reduce the size of the fruit and overall mango production in the district, by 15% to 30%.

“We have to concentrate more on developing variety of Jardalu mainly on such adverse climatic conditions,” the varsity sources pointed out. It is to be mentioned here that the varsity already had developed variety of paddy which could tolerate such vagaries of Nature in this region.

However sources said another 400 boxes of the prized mango variety, each bearing five kilos of the fruit, would be sent to Patna soon for distribution among  concerned VVIPs in the state capital.