From 'dog fruit' to darling: India's avocado boom
Avocados in India transformed from neglected fruit eaten by dogs into a lucrative cash crop after Bollywood endorsement.
Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event
- Indian avocados were once left to rot on the ground and fed to dogs.
- Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty boosted demand in 2011 by praising skincare uses.
- Cottanad Plantations in Kerala aims to harvest 50 tonnes annually soon.
- Indo-Israel Avocado Nursery in Bhopal has supplied 18,000 foreign saplings.
Fifteen years ago, the market for avocados in India was virtually nonexistent, as recalled by Sunil Bopaiah. Overripe fruit would drop straight onto the ground and be consumed by dogs, earning the crop the unappealing moniker of dog fruit in the region.
Bopaiah, who has spent 26 years working in India plantation sector and currently serves as group manager at Cottanad Plantations in the hills of Wayanad, Kerala, notes that they initially planted the trees merely to provide shade for coffee crops. The turning point arrived around 2011 when Bollywood celebrity Shilpa Shetty publicly endorsed avocados for skincare routines, causing market prices to double overnight and climb steadily ever since.
In response to soaring demand, Cottanad allocated 40 acres of land exclusively for avocado cultivation. Last year, the plantation yielded between 10 and 15 tonnes of fruit, and management hopes to scale that output up to 40 to 50 tonnes within the next three to four years by adopting modern South African agricultural techniques such as raised beds and wider spacing.
Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event
Despite local production growth, high-end culinary establishments still encounter hurdles regarding consistency. Hussain Shahzad, executive chef at Hunger Inc. Hospitality in Mumbai, explains that while domestic produce is improving, imported varieties continue to provide the reliable flavor, texture, and ripening size required for professional restaurant operations.
"We never planted avocado as our main crop. We introduced it as a shade tree."
Sunil Bopaiah
Entrepreneurs are working hard to bridge that quality gap. Harshit Godha established the Indo-Israel Avocado Nursery in Bhopal in 2021 after studying agricultural methods abroad, supplying roughly 18,000 international saplings like Hass and Pinkerton to farmers across the country to modernize commercial orchards.
The rapid shift toward avocado farming highlights how Indian agriculture is diversifying away from traditional crops suffering from erratic weather patterns. However, establishing a commercial orchard requires specialized knowledge in rootstock selection, meticulous pruning to manage tree height, and precise cross-pollination ratios to ensure fruit production.
Parallel to private nurseries, Dr. Ganeshan Karunakaran, principal scientist at the ICAR-Indian Institute of Horticultural Research in Bengaluru, has spent 25 years breeding standardized local varieties like Arka Supreme to provide farmers with uniform, high-yielding planting material and protect them from unverified, disease-prone nursery stock.
Source: BBC Science & Environment
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