About eight months after the Vijay Rupani led BJP government announced renaming of dragon fruit as "kamalam" meaning lotus, the state government, for the first time on Thursday kicked off a five-day farm festival "Farm Fresh Kamalam & Fruit Mahotsva" with an aim to promote the fruit's production and consumption in the state.
After inaugurating the festival at Karnavati club in Ahmedabad, state agriculture minister R C Faldu said that "for the two years, farming of kamalam has seen a steep rise in the state, which accounts to nearly 35% of total production in the country. This is a matter of pride. Therefore, we will be holding such festivals every year to promote the farmers growing kamalam and other fruits."
According to state agriculture department's estimate, kamalam is grown in about 1,200 hectares of land across Gujarat with annual production of about 4,000 metric tones. Secretary of Agriculture Manish Bharadwaj, who was present during the inauguration, said that "kamalam has been included in Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture (MIDH) in which subsidies are provided to the growers by the central government.
On name change, Bharadwaj said that after farmers' push the name was changed to "kamalam" and central government recently released an advisory in this regard also. He said that, "kamalam is different from the standard dragon fruit grown in Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam.
"The local farmers here have created the varieties by grafting and other techniques. They are now different in size, taste and colour. kamalam is bigger, much sweeter and comes in different colour as well," Bharadwaj said while adding that to promote the farming and consumption of the fruit, a similar festival will be organised in Delhi also by the end of this month.
In the festival over 30 farmers are exhibiting their produce of kamalam, its byproducts including chocolates, jams among others along with other fruits. Mehul Patel, a farmer from Navsari in south Gujarat, said that he left his job at a mobile service provider firm and started cultivating dragon fruit four years ago on his one acre of land.
"I learnt how to grow this fruit from Google and currently I grow nearly 10 tones a season. I sell them at around Rs 180 a kg in markets in Surat and Mumbai. This is a good business where the expenditure is much less and profit was reasonably well," he said.