Bithoor

Bithoor River Ganges Ghats Kanpur

Bithoor Fruit | Agriculture Quality & Yield

Bithoor Guava Orchards and guava grown across River Ganges in the GangaGhat area, have traditionally been popular and valued for their taste, aroma, texture and excellent quality.

It is not clearly known how old these baghs and amrood ke bageeche are. Nor is it known who were the notable people who planted these wonderful Guava Baghs of Bithoor and Ganga Ghat, for the benefit of future generations.

These traditional Amrood ke Bagh have been a pride of Bithoor and of the trans Ganges Katri area.

In recent times there has been significant decline in the area, acreage and quality of the famous Bithoor Guava as well as Uttar Pradesh Guava.

The reasons for this are four-fold :

• Farmers are abandoning and transitioning away from guava cultivation in favor of annual crops due to guava wilt disease.
• Farmers are abandoning guava cultivation due to diminishing economic returns. Contractors and bulk or forward buyers too, avoid avoid purchasing guava orchards in areas affected by wilt, due to inability to calculate production and post harvest pricing of Bithoor Guava.
• The urbanization pressures in the Bithoor area, is resulting in the cutting down of the guava plantations of Bithoor, in favour of land plotting and realty speculation.
• Lack of interest in research, into guava horticulture improvement and viability.

Guava wilt disease affects the xylem vessels of mature guava plants, blocking the movement of water and nutrients and eventually killing the plant. As per ICAR, guava productivity in India is highest in Gujarat. Advance production estimate of guava productivity in India, for 2022-2023, was pegged at 52.74 lakh tonnes, a marginal decline against 56 lakh tonnes in 2021-2022.

In fiscal year 2023, actual volume of guava produced in India, is estimated to have amounted to 5.6 million metric tons. This was a slight increase from the previous year.

There has been low interest, in planting new stock of guava trees in Bithoor, and new guava orchards by a new generation, of farmers and orchard owners due to structural issues.

Other causes of tree / plant death : Guava plants can also die due to insect pests like stem borers, bark eating caterpillars, termites, or root white grubs. Other causes include root rotting fungi, water deficiency, or soil issues.

A ten year old Guava tree can be expected to produce 100 to 500 kg of guava fruit annually. The marketable yields are extremely variable.

Jageshwar Mandi is one of the main trading mandis for Bithoor Guava.