MANGALURU: A farmer from Dakshina Kannada district has a mini-world of sorts on his 25 acres of land in Belthangady taluk and the latest addition is blue java bananas or ice cream bananas, as they are popularly called.
For the past 15 years, Anil has been growing more than 700 types of tropical fruits on his land in Balanja near Guruvayanakere, and most of them are from Central or South America, Europe or Southeast Asian countries. The 37-year-old said this is probably the first time that a farmer in Karnataka has grown the blue Java bananas popular in Southeast Asia.
“This banana variety created a flutter on the internet about five months ago when a person talked about it in detail and revealed that it actually tastes like vanilla ice cream,” he said.
Anil said that these bananas are creamy and their skin is blue. “These are grown in bags to prevent the plant from getting infected. Therefore, the fruit set was limited to about 50. I spent Rs 21,000, including transportation, to get the tissue-cultured plant from Thailand during my visit to an exhibition two years ago. Now we have 10 plants of this variety.
He sells plants to nurseries across India. “We’ve managed to grow so far inga edulis (also called ice cream beans), native to South America. We harvested about 1.5 quintals of fruits. In addition, we have white jaboticaba, abi fruit, mami sapote, Champedak, Durian, Japanese variety of blackberry, Gac fruit of Egyptian variety, jam fruithandjob delicious rollinia And so on,” he said.
Fruit Park work in progress
Anil has started work on developing a unique fruit park for educational purposes on his six acres of land. “Out of interest, I have studied fruits and interacted with farmers across the world. The focus is on growing fruits from Southeast Asia and adapted to our climatic conditions. For farmers, it is important to grow traditional commercial crops like arecanut as well as cultivating a variety of fruits that have a good market and support livelihoods,” he said.
For the past 15 years, Anil has been growing more than 700 types of tropical fruits on his land in Balanja near Guruvayanakere, and most of them are from Central or South America, Europe or Southeast Asian countries. The 37-year-old said this is probably the first time that a farmer in Karnataka has grown the blue Java bananas popular in Southeast Asia.
“This banana variety created a flutter on the internet about five months ago when a person talked about it in detail and revealed that it actually tastes like vanilla ice cream,” he said.
Anil said that these bananas are creamy and their skin is blue. “These are grown in bags to prevent the plant from getting infected. Therefore, the fruit set was limited to about 50. I spent Rs 21,000, including transportation, to get the tissue-cultured plant from Thailand during my visit to an exhibition two years ago. Now we have 10 plants of this variety.
He sells plants to nurseries across India. “We’ve managed to grow so far inga edulis (also called ice cream beans), native to South America. We harvested about 1.5 quintals of fruits. In addition, we have white jaboticaba, abi fruit, mami sapote, Champedak, Durian, Japanese variety of blackberry, Gac fruit of Egyptian variety, jam fruithandjob delicious rollinia And so on,” he said.
Fruit Park work in progress
Anil has started work on developing a unique fruit park for educational purposes on his six acres of land. “Out of interest, I have studied fruits and interacted with farmers across the world. The focus is on growing fruits from Southeast Asia and adapted to our climatic conditions. For farmers, it is important to grow traditional commercial crops like arecanut as well as cultivating a variety of fruits that have a good market and support livelihoods,” he said.
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