Farmer grows winter fruit in sandy soil to a delicious outcome
Haresh Thakkar with his produce
Mumbai will soon get to taste delicious strawberries from the Kutch region of Gujarat. Haresh Thakkar, a strawberry farmer, is doing the impossible, cultivating the fruit in a 7.5 acre-land in Reldi village in the Kutch district. In India, strawberries are primarily cultivated in Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Delhi, Hariyana, Punjab and Rajasthan.
Kutch’s sandy soil is not conducive to grow strawberries. But, Thakkar decided to experiment on a patch of farmland, which he and his brothers purchased in the 1990s. “We visited Lonavla in 2020-2021 and bought 30,000 strawberry plants. We planted these plants on our farm in Kutch, during the winter months. I used the Israeli model of irrigation, and also watched a lot YouTube videos. Strawberries need very little water,” Thakkar explained.
His experiments bore great results. “In Maharashtra, the fruit weighs 8-30 gm, while mine are 10-90 gm. Our strawberries are also a lot tastier.” He has already started selling his strawberries in Ahmedabad, Rajkot and Surat, and is getting requests from Mumbai as well.
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