While Punjab claims its fruit is sweeter and better, for farmers such as Chamkaur Singh of Tohra village its sweetness has more to do with the good returns it is fetching. With just two acres of his land under banana cultivation, he has been able to earn Rs 1.25 lakh per acre. The fruit’s inclusion in the National Horticulture Mission recently is likely to further sweeten the proposition for Punjab farmers, as up to 50 per cent subsidy will now be offered for its plants and drip irrigation. So out of Rs 16 that the plant costs, the farmers will have to bear just Rs 8 as the cost per plant, explains Dr P S Rangi, consultant with the Punjab Farmers Commission, which is piloting the project.

There are, however, certain points of concern. The first crop carries a risk of failure though the commission says the next three crops are practically risk-free. Also, bananas are sensitive to frost and excessive cold — the reason why most of northern Punjab has been found to be unsuitable for its cultivation. “In the northern parts of Punjab, temperatures dip as low as minus four degrees. This can destroy the crop, which is why districts such as Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Hoshiarpur, Nawan Shehar are off the list and the farmers of central Punjab such as Patiala, Moga, Ludhiana, Ropar, Mohali and the cotton belt such as Bathinda and Sangrur are being encouraged to grow the fruit. Besides the strategy is to cut the fruit by November before the winter strikes, as bananas are also in huge demand then due to the festive season,” adds Rangi.

As bananas flourish in Punjab, a more scientific way to store and ripen them is also being developed. This is urgently required, as the state gets the fruit from the southern and western states as raw, and ripens it with banned products such as calcium carbide.

While private agencies developing farm-to-fork post-harvest facilities with a few already having set up their packaging houses for scientific storage of perishables for their retail operations in the state, as many as 10 markets of the state will also be modernised under various schemes of the Punjab State Marketing Board.

To start with, the first such fruit and veggie market will come up in Ludhiana with the technical assistance of Voltas group of Tatas. “The modern markets will have ripening chambers where fruits such as mangoes, bananas and papayas will be ripened through ethylene gas and not banned products, as is the practice at present. These markets will also offer the facility of storage of fruits,” says Dr B S Ghuman of PAU ‘s Post Harvest Technology Centre, which has done the feasibility study for the modern market coming up in Ludhiana.