“Pineapple is a highly perishable food-crop and even in cold-storage it lasts for only 28 days. In such a situation, the one-time earned money is too little for the family to survive for the whole year and growers of the state said that as far as profitability in the future is concerned, rubber is the best option,” said Gourab Saha an Agriculture Officer.

To provide growers with more market linkage, the North Eastern Regional Agriculture Marketing Corporation (NERAMC) had set up a fruit juice concentration plant, way back in 1988, in Nalkata with an initial capital investment of Rs. 3.60 crore. The aim was to purchase surplus marketable pineapple and other fruits. The plant has an installed capacity of 48 metric tonnes per day. In 2007-08 NERAMC procured 750 metric tonnes of pineapple from the growers, much lower than the average production of the state. 

Even the news of Tripura’s pineapples finding their way to export markets in countries like Italy has hardly provided any satisfaction to the growers.

Now, with the introduction of a new process called ‘staggering’ in which a hormone called Ethel along with a few other chemicals are introduced into the plants, the farmers can harvest the fruit according to their requirement throughout the year. 

Ashok Das, an Agriculture Officer in the Department of Agriculture said, “To reduce the market glut of pineapple we have introduced staggering on an experimental basis and it has proved very successful.” 

The staggering method has been tested and proven in Tripura’s Horticulture Research Complex in Nagricherra area. It was first introduced in 25 hectares of farmers’ land in 2005. Now altogether 200 hectares of pineapple growing areas were brought under staggered cultivation to get raw pineapples in 8-10 months per year, thus, the grower’s income has doubled and due to adoption of staggering method, the price will remain steady for longer periods.

Naresh Chanda Deb a pineapple orchard owner, who adopted staggering said, “If we can sell the pineapples thrice in a year then we can get profits. Now after hearing the method of staggering from the Agriculture Officer we adopted the method and got good results. I started adopting the staggering method in September and now in January and February (after five months) the fruits are ripe. Now in the market only we are supplying the fruit and so the price is good. Since only a limited number of farmers adopted the staggering, there is shortage of pineapples and hence we are making a profit.”

The labrourers who were usually poorly paid and who had work for only three months in a year are also happy as they now get work round the year in the orchards.

“We were poorly paid before and had work for only three months in a year but we are happy now as we get work round the year in the orchards,” said Muksud Ali who is a labourer.

Now the pineapple farmers see a silver lining in the new process by which they can get the crop as and when required and also get good returns.

Productivity of pineapple per hectare in Tripura is 18.73 tonnes, which is higher than the national average of 15.80 tonnes.