Best fruit forward: Check out a unique ‘mango museum' in Gujarat

Hindustan Times

03-05-2025

There is an unusual kind of orchard in Bhalchhel village, about 3 km from the town of Sasan Gir.
Beside the Hiran River, amid bee-eaters and sunbirds, rows of trees hold a confounding array of mangoes. On one, kesari aams gleam in the sunlight; on another, golden Alphonsos hang heavy. There's a banana-shaped mango here, an apple-shaped one there. Some taste like pineapples, some like lemons.
Samsudin Jariya and his family call it the mango museum.
A total of 300 varieties of the fruit grow on their 12-acre plot. There are mangoes from Japan and Thailand, as well as from across India. One of the newest additions is a Kohitur tree, known to bear a fruit so delicate and delicious that it was said the Nawab of Bengal once banned his people from eating it, 'reserving' all its fruit for himself.
The unusual museum is itself the fruit of three generations, toiling together. Work on the plot began in 1963, when Samsudin's father, Noor Ali Jariya, a farmer with land of his own not far away, bought the land at a throwaway price, because the terrain and soil were quite unsuitable for farming. Jariya, then not yet 30 and now 89, spent years levelling the soil, readying it for his son to work on. As part of this effort, he planted a few kesar mango trees, in 1970.
When Samsudin Jariya took over, in 2000, aged 35, he decided mangoes were the way to go. Profits from the farm's few trees were already trickling in. He planted more, and began to explore what else he could do on this land.
It struck him then that he could turn the orchard into a tourist attraction and woo the many visitors arriving at the nearby Gir National Park. With this in mind, he built a farmhouse on the plot and opened up two rooms to tourists, so they could experience life on a real mango farm.
Then came a turning point. In 2008, a friend and fellow mango farmer in Sasan Gir, Nathabhai Bhatu, introduced him to high-density orchard farming. In this method, dwarf trees pruned to heights of no more than 8 ft to 10 ft produce fruit. Where traditional farming methods allow for 50 to 70 mango trees per acre, high-density farming allows the same plot to accommodate 500.
In 2021, his son Sumeet Jariya, who has a Master's degree in biotechnology, quit his job with a food-processing company in Angola and returned home. He knew his father had long been interested in diversifying the mango crop. Together, they decided to see how far they could take that plan.
Working as a family, Samsudin, his wife Dilshad Jariya and their two sons, Sumeet and Anil Jariya have boosted the number of varieties to 300, and the number of trees to 3,500.
The family's newest addition has been Thailand's Katimon mango, which bears fruit in March and April (like most mango trees) but also in September and October, when mangoes are determinedly off-season in India. Such varieties will boost their profits year-round, says Sumeet, 31.
Three years ago, the family added the famous Japanese Miyazaki too. Expensive to grow in Japan, where this tree requires temperature-controlled greenhouses, it is easier to cultivate in India's year-round heat. While the best of these fruits are auctioned at astronomical rates in Japan, the Jariyas plan to sell their Miyazakis in hampers of two and three, priced at ₹500 or ₹1,000, when fruiting begins in another three years.
The museum isn't just fun, games and rare fruit either.
In times of uncertain climate — with intensifying storms, unseasonal rain and heat waves hurting every stage of mango production, from pollination to flowering and fruiting — the more varieties one can experiment with, the better, says Samsudin, now 60.
'Museums like ours can help farmers decide which varieties are suitable for their land,' Sumeet adds. 'New techniques such as high-density farming and the use of climate-smart varieties can help small-holdings farmers gain more profits from their plots.'
As part of this effort, the Jariya mango museum offers courses in exotic mango farming and nursery management, and currently takes on eight to 10 undergraduate horticulture students a year, offering them on-site training and a chance to get their hands dirty.
The Anil Farmhouse hotel, meanwhile, now consists of 25 rooms, with guided walks on offer for all guests.
The family's next step? 'An assorted exotic-mangoes box,' says Sumeet Jariya, grinning, 'like a box of chocolates.' You'll never know what you're gonna get.