At apple pad,another revolution

Each of the 10,000 fresh plants being planted across the 250 bighas here would speak of its own history,pedigree,health,treatments and experiments done on it as an elaborate database of individual fruit tree is also being maintained.

That is being made possible with practices that were never heard of or felt necessary in the apple orchard business. A dedicated weather station automatically logs data,every half-an-hour,of mundane orchard operation,calculates spacing between the trees and measures exact north-south directions of rows using GPS.

“This has been planned to come up as a living laboratory and its failure or success can only be concluded after 50 years. Many of us behind its inception may not be around at that time,so the database of the experiment would certainly give insights and form basis for apple research in India in future,says Vijay Stokes,grandson of Samuel Evans Stokes,and a former Professor of Mechanical Engineering at IIT Kanpur.

The experiment started in 2007. Stokes invited sneers from people in Kotgarh when he chopped off hundreds of 40-year-old trees to make way for new apple plant varieties and root stocks that he had imported from Adams County Nursery in Aspers,PA United States of America .

“As the earth moving machine uprooted trees,bewildered crowds would gather from the nearby villages to watch the process. We were doing the experiments at the cost of income generating trees,” remembers Vijay Stokes,who decided to do so after fruit traders in Shimla wholesale market told him that that his iconic brand,Harmony Hall orchard,had become poorest in terms of fruit quality. The reason,Stokes said,was neglect.

The next problem was to decide on the varieties to plant. After consultations with a local orchardist,Hari Roach,who had imported plants from America in 2002,Stokes decided to go in for a large- scale import of apple trees of which 75 per cent were spur variety of Super Chiefs and Fuji variety grafted on tallest of the available Dwarf Rootstocks EMLA 111 in 2007.

In 2008,his imports focused on Gala and Fuji. The orchard now also has a scion bank of over 20 modern apple varieties,which would be experimented with in the coming years.

“After futuristic calculations about height and width of each full grown tree,I enforced strict pattern of plantation in north-south rows. The rows have been spaced from each other in such a way that when the trees grow full length,they get sunlight throughout the day,from different directions. And this spacing pattern also took care that as the sun moves from east to west,the shadow of one tree does not restrict the sunlight for the other,” explains Stokes.

Similarly,the pruning pattern for the trees would be such that the trees do not look like a round canopy but conical,for better penetration of sunlight which increases productivity.

To meet the water needs of plants on shorter rootstocks,which require large quantity of water as they have shallow roots,the orchard has invested a huge deal on rain water harvesting and utilisation of the waste household water from labour huts in soak pits.

The initial lot of 2,000 new apple plantations planted in first year would start bearing fruits exactly after five years. By 2013,all 10,000 new plants would be in place. Each year after that,at least 500 to 1,000 plants would come in production.

When asked if there’s a potential for another revolution in his experiments,Vijay Stokes says,“It is certain that once people,local scientists and government see for themselves the success or failure of what I am doing,a chain reaction would follow”.

Vijay Stokes and his siblings are planning to turn the HH Orchard Estate into an apple research institution under a trust dedicated to S E Stokes. The estate has already employed local school passouts and college dropout youths who are being trained to make presentations and write annual plans and reports on computers.