Growers, traders worried as many arecanut loads are rejected by north Indian traders citing poor quality

Arecanut growers in Malnad face quality issues, impacting market rates; experts advise traditional processing methods for quality retention.

Arecanut growers in the Malnad region are worried as many truckloads of the nut were rejected by traders in north India citing poor quality in the recent days. This trend has hit the prevailing rate of arecanut as well.

Many truckloads of arecanuts traded by private merchants and cooperative societies have been rejected by traders in the north Indian States. According to traders, this trend has brought down the price of arecanut from ₹55,000 a quintal to ₹45,000 a quintal in a month. Malnad Areca Marketing Cooperative Society Ltd. (MAMCOS) has suggested that growers and traders give necessary attention to maintain the quality of arecanut.

Mahesh H.S. Hulkuli, vice-president of MAMCOS, told The Hindu, “Traders in the north Indian States are citing the poor quality of arecanuts as the reason for rejection. This has hit the market. We are appealing to growers not to compromise with the quality.”

Many in the trade believe that the quality of nuts suffers when the processing is not done properly. After removing the husk, arecanut kernels are boiled, and areca precipitates are added. Then, the nuts are dried. Later, the nuts are graded as Nuli, Hasa, Rashi, Bette, and Gorablu. Gorablu is valued low in the market.

“Many truckloads are rejected because of the mixing of the Gorablu variety with Rashi. A truckload normally consists of 330 bags of nuts, each weighing 70 kg. Some middlemen, for a higher profit margin, mix around 100 bags of Gorablu with Rashi. When the buyers notice it at the delivery point, the load is returned. Some people add chemicals to the Gorablu nuts variety and mix them with Rashi,” a trader explained.

Shivamogga District Cooperative Central Bank president R.M. Manjunath Gowda said some traders had engaged in wrong practices for high returns, which would impact areca cultivation and trade in the long run. “When the issue of reports suggesting that areca would cause cancer is before the Supreme Court, such acts of some traders will hit areca cultivation further. The growers have to be cautious, and they should not fall prey to any such attempts as many have suffered huge losses,” he said.

Meanwhile, experts have suggested that the growers follow the traditional processing methods. Nagaraj Adiveppar, head of the Areca Research Centre at Keladi Shivappa Nayaka University of Agricultural and Horticultural Sciences, said farmers should follow the traditional methods of processing arecanut to retain the quality.