The Custard Apple’s Unlikely Rise From Drought Farms to Global Plates
BBC Business reported Sunday that custard apple exports from India are gaining momentum, as farmers and researchers work to overcome the fruit’s notoriously short shelf life and bring it to markets in the Gulf, Europe, and the United States.
The custard apple — a knobby, avocado-sized fruit with sweet, creamy flesh — is well suited to dry, rain-scarce regions. Its trees require minimal irrigation and few pesticides, making it attractive to farmers in drought-prone areas of southern India.
From Drought Belt to Deliberate Farming
Ashoka Shivareddy, a software engineer turned farmer from Karnataka’s Kolar district, returned to his family land in 2018 after years away. He chose custard apple specifically for its resilience in low-rainfall conditions. By planting trees more densely and selecting three complementary varieties, he grew output from nothing to roughly 25 tonnes last season.
His story is not unusual. Across India, farmers are applying more rigorous techniques to a crop that long grew wild and unmanaged, seeing it as a commercially viable alternative to water-intensive staples.
The Science Behind Better Fruit
Traditional custard apple varieties present real commercial limitations. Pulp content is low, seed counts are high, and the fruit can spoil within three or four days of harvest. Those constraints make transport and retail difficult.
Researchers at the Indian Institute of Horticulture Research in Bangalore developed a hybrid called Arka Sahan to address those weaknesses directly. The variety lasts up to a week at room temperature, carries significantly more pulp, and produces far fewer seeds. Principal scientist Dr Sakthivel T noted that usable pulp recovery has more than doubled compared with wild varieties, without requiring additional farmland.
Scientists are also tackling a persistent processing challenge: custard apple pulp browns rapidly after extraction. New techniques aim to preserve the pulp’s pale colour, potentially opening a larger market in processed foods such as ice cream and beverages.
A Farmer-Bred Variety Opens Export Routes
In Maharashtra, India’s top custard apple producing state, Navnath Malhari Kaspate spent over a decade cross-pollinating seeds collected from across the country. His NMK-01 variety, released commercially in 2014, is now the preferred choice for exporters because of its thicker skin, superior shelf life, and higher pulp content.
Custard apple exports now reach Gulf countries, Europe, and North America. But logistics remain demanding. Exporters must coordinate harvesting, packing, airport transfer, and customs clearance to the hour, with overnight road journeys used to limit heat exposure during the most vulnerable stage of transit.
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