Why Buy Organic Mangoes from Healthy Buddha?
Posted By on Monday 19th April 2021
In regular farming, apart from regular usage of chemical pesticides and fungicides, there is another practice of using a growth retardant to stimulate flowering of mangoes. This growth retardant named “Cultar” is poured 2 feet beneat the soil in the feeder root zone for easier absorption by the plants. This is highly prevalent in most of the mango orchards today. Cultar leaves a nitratic residue in the soil, tree, and the fruit. Sadest part is that agrictulural universities support this practice but are totally silent on the residual effect.
Regular usage of this over a period of 5-6 years makes even the tree branches brittle. So, imagine the effect on human beings consuming it. In Organic practice, panchakavyam is used to induce flowering. This is followed by 1-2 sprays of bio fungicide and bio pesticides as required. Good organic farmers also makes it a practice to wash all the harvested fruits to reduce faster ripening.
in chemical farming, after harvest every fruit is dipped in an anti fungal chemical liquid to reduce the rotting on the top of the fruit. It is not advisable to use any kind of pesticides atleast 3 weeks before the harvest. Endosulphan is sprayed on mangoes ten days before harvesting to get rid of the fruit fly which can damage the mangoes after they are plucked.
In organic, to stop this, two methods are used. Fruits are dipped in 55 degrees hot water (slightly above luke warm) with common salt. This solution kills any eggs laid on the surface by the fruit flies and prevents possible fungal infection.
The mango itself may be free of the chemical. However since mangoes are now mass-produced and are being transported great distances, they are often plucked before they are seasoned and then quickly ripened by using ethylene gas. Ethylene gas is not harmful in itself. In fact, it is released naturally by the mango from the seed outwards as it ripens. But subjecting the fruit to this gas externally, ripens the mango from the skin inwards. Thus the skin looks golden yellow, but the fruit is likely to be sour. A dangerous fruit ripening agent which is also common is calcium carbide because it is usually contaminated with arsenic, which is a deadly poisonous heavy metal.
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