The kindest of cuts

It's a win-win situation for farmers: no loss of income, and a prolonged and more productive life for their orchards.

The future should be rosy for India's mango farmers. Demand for the fruit is rising not only at home, but elsewhere – for example, by around 15% per year in the United States. Indian farmers, who already account for around 40% of world production, should be ideally placed to take advantage of the expanding market. But there's a problem: over half the country's mango orchards are over 40 years old.

"These old orchards are very unproductive, and many only produce fruit intermittently," explains Pal Singh, the World Agroforestry Centre's regional coordinator for South Asia. "Farmers can uproot the trees and replace them with new saplings, but if they do that, they'll have to wait between 6 to 10 years before they get any fruit." For those with little land and capital this simply isn't an option.

Fortunately, there is an alternative. Over the past decade, the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) and the World Agroforestry Centre have conducted research on ways of rejuvenating old mango orchards. The trees are cut back to just over a metre high, leaving a few green shoots to form new branches. "With the correct procedures, in terms of pollarding, the use of fertilizers and irrigation, farmers will get their first harvest after 3 to 4 years," explains AK Singh, head of IARI's Division of Fruits and Horticultural Technology. The yields of rejuvenated orchards can reach 12 tonnes per ha per year, more than double the average for India.

Pollarding prolongs an orchard's life by up to 15 years. By reducing the canopy, it also enables farmers to plant new high-yielding varieties between the pollards. There is another advantage too. The timber harvested has a value equivalent to 4 or 5 crops of fruit. In short, it's a win-win situation for farmers: no loss of income, and a prolonged and more productive life for their orchards.