News from India
The Queen of Spices
Only vanilla and saffron are more expensive; only cinnamon and black pepper might have a claim to being the oldest spice. But only one spice boasts of being the Queen of Spices, and that’s cardamom.
Recognised for its exceptional taste, flavour and aroma for more than 4,000 years, cardamom rightly takes its crown for its incomparable culinary versatility. The spice is a veritable gem across sweet as well as savoury dishes, its influence spreading to cuisines well beyond its native habitat in India: it’s been popular in Scandinavia ever since the Vikings took it home from Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) more than 1,000 years ago, enthusiastically adding it to everything from biscuits and breads to pastries and sausages. Could there be any greater contrast between the humid Indian tropics and a region that stretches into the Arctic Circle?
Only one plant is the true cardamom, Elletaria cardamomum. It’s a member of the Zingiberaceae family – otherwise known as the ginger family – and is in illustrious company: many of the family’s species are recognised as ornamentals, medicinals, or spices, while many also yield the essential oils so prized by the perfume industry. Another member of the ginger family, Amomum, is known as the large cardamom: it’s the source of the black (or brown) pods.
We’ve talked before about ginger, specifically its Indian cultivation and also about FertiGlobal’s specific interests in India. We’re very keen on the ‘boots on the ground’ philosophy: only by talking to farmers, ‘unfiltered’, can we really get a measure for the crop production challenges they face.
And so it was that just a few months ago, we paid another visit to India, this time to the hills of Southern India and specifically the Western Ghats, where cardamom still grows wild. Despite its origins in India, today the country vies with Guatemala for the title of top global producer, and joins other countries such as Indonesia, China and Vietnam to turn out nearly 140,000 tonnes of cardamom annually.
For a crop that’s so highly revered, sought-after and expensive, one might expect its cultivation to be second-to-none. Yet its preference for elevations higher than 600m and shaded forest soils tends to ensure that production remains limited to small plots of land and in the hands of smallholders.
Added to that is its labour-intensive nature. Not only is much of the initial preparation – clearing weeds and sowing seed – carried out by hand, but it may take up to three years before it yields merely a light crop, all the while requiring weeding and transplantations to maintain a healthy stand. Needless to say, even when the crop comes into full production – plantations generally last around 10 years – the crop is gathered, dried and processed by hand.
FertiGlobal, of course, could be described as ‘production practice agnostic’: our attention is not on how many hectares a farmer has, or whether he or she is using the latest technology. Our only focus is on the crop. Total Crop Management. That’s because when it comes to their production practices, a small-scale farmer faces just the same challenges on crop nutrition, crop health and crop stress as his well-hectared counterpart.
What’s more, with a crop like cardamom where the profitable, yield-producing period accounts for only part of a much longer crop lifecycle, it’s even more important that we can help farmers get their crops off to a good start. In any crop, realising its full yield potential requires a good start every time.
In a hot and humid climate like India’s, crops can be particularly susceptible to fungal disease. But many farmers are still encouraged to use chemicals like mancozeb, which is now banned in many of the countries to which the crop is exported. That’s why FertiGlobal’s team is working closely with our Indian branch, SCL Commercial India, to examine the potential of our bioactive technologies like EnNuVi and FOLISTIM, for example.
Both technologies support plant defence systems, preventing many diseases from taking hold in the first place, and helping farmers avoid coming under pressure to use a harsh chemical to cure an outbreak.
We’re looking forward to seeing more results from our work in India. It’s another country where the FertiGlobal difference is bringing real benefit – not just to farmers, but consumers and the environment too.
