Reliance Industries Limited

Reliance Mangoes from Jamnagar

1. Preamble Reliance is known for its excellence and massive scale of operations in what ever it ventures in. Its Refinery at Jamnagar is the largest grass root refinery in the World. In this 7500 acre Refinery complex where only barren land existed a few years ago one can now find an oasis in the form of massive greenery of more than 32 lakh plants of more than 200 species. Within last 6-7 years there has been a total transformation of the barren waste land into lush green countryside. Late Legendary Shri Dhirubhai Ambani believed that if the standard of living of the rural masses is to be improved we must improve our agriculture. He had firm conviction that agriculture has tremendous potential to generate employment. He was therefore thinking of investing in agriculture in such a way that it can generate wealth for the nation, create employment and bring smiles to the millions of our rural men and women. At the same time he was very careful not to deprive any farmers of their cultivable lands. He therefore came to the idea of developing waste lands which are in millions of acres in India into horticulture and plantations. 2. Vision of Jamnagar Agro Initiative It all began in 1997 when the gigantic Refinery was being constructed at Jamnagar. Some green belt had to be developed to fulfil the statutory greening requirement as per the Pollution Control Boards. The opportunity was seized to establish a pilot Horticulture project aimed at fulfilling the late Chairmans vision of bringing Waste lands into productive usage in the process transforming the arid desert refinery site into an ever green environmental show piece. 3. Hostile Jamnagar agroclimatic conditions: Jamnagar represents the arid subtropical areas of Saurashtra characterized by scanty annual rainfall of 300mm and frequent droughts. The climate is hot and dry with daily high velocity winds of 3040 km/hr. Soils are shallow, medium to low in fertility with high pH of 8.5 to 9.5 and high salinity. There is absence of any perennial water source for irrigation. Under these conditions no one else would have dared to start a commercial agriculture project. But for Reliance it was a challenge. Instead of conventional green belt a commercial horticultural pilot project was conceived . 4. Reliance Pilot Horticulture project: Reliance has interest into entering into agro-business in a big way in near future primarily to generate employment opportunities to millions of rural youths thereby improving the socio-economic conditions of millions

of rural population. Therefore Reliance is looking for agro-business opportunities in several States of India. Jamnagar Agro Initiatives, therefore, is Reliances pilot agro project where we are trying to standardize various systems and procedures, packages of practices for various crops which could be scaled up elsewhere. any refinery or township waste water for mango plantation 5. Salient features of Reliance Mango Plantation: Reliance endeavour is to adopt the world class technology with required investments and achieve far better productivity than anywhere in the world. The salient features of our approach are: 1. High density planting with 270-1333 per acre plants of mango 2. All plantations with almost 100 % plant population 3. 100 % area under drip irrigation with fertigation and black polythene mulching 4. Integrated pest management with emphasis on biopesticides 5. Integrated nutrient management with emphasis on use of green manuring and organic manures. 6. Windbreaker plantation of casuarina all around and intersections of the plantation 6. Water resources for mango: Jamnagar being arid and perennially drought prone area availability of irrigation water is the most crucial and scarce input at Jamnagar. Maximum efforts have been made to rain water harvesting by creating a large number of farm ponds and water shed development. We use only the fresh water from these farm ponds for growing mango which is supplemented by desalinated. We do not use refinery or township waste water for mango. 7. Asias largest and best mango orchard: Under the hostile conditions of Jamnagar only Dhirubhai could dream of developing Asias largest and the best mango orchard. Initially there was a lot of skepticism about success of mango at Jamnagar owing to high velocity winds, salinity in water and soil. However, with adoption of appropriate technology mango has become a success story. One can not find such a large scale scientifically managed successful mango plantation anywhere in this part of the world. The history of India is replete with mango citations. The Akbar the Mughal Emperor was very fond of mangoes. He had established mango grove of one lakh mango trees at Darbhanga in Bihar during 16th Century which was known as Lakhibag. As a part of pilot project Reliance has planted more than 100,000 mango trees in the green belt of Refinery complex from 1998 to 2004 In fond memory of Late Shri Dhirubhai Ambani who was a great

lover of mangoes and befittingly named it as Dhirubhai Ambani Lakhibag Amrayee which is testimony to his vision and dream. 8. World class Mango Production Technology With Reliances culture of world class technology, latest mango production technology is in play. 1. High density planting on 447 acres with 266 to 1333 plants per acre has been done from 1998 to 2004. 2. With the emerging trend of minimum use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers emphasis is on use of biopesticides, organic manures and green manuring. 3. The required minimum fertilizers are being given through drip irrigation(Fertigation) at the critical stages depending upon the needs. Such minimum use of chemical fertilizers not only saves on the cost of inputs and help in mango tree performance it also avoids the indiscriminate pollution of underground water resources which is a prime concern of Reliance Group. 4. Jamnagar being hot and dry with very scanty rainfall, the incidence of diseases and pest is almost absent. Therefore there is hardly any need to use any pesticides. 5. Conventional mango trees are gigantic in height and spread which makes spraying, harvesting etc very cumbersome and costly. In this Dhirubhai Ambani Amrayee the mango trees are kept dwarf by pruning on the top as well as sides so that at any given time the mango trees will not be taller and wider than 3 m making them hedge rows. This will enable efficient management and each fruit could be plucked by hand to avoid bruising while harvesting. 9. Plenty of varieties: 1. Mango is originated in India and there are more than 1000 mango varieties grown in India However only 20 varieties have become commercial in various States of India. 2. At Reliance Agro, Kesar is the major variety covering about 90 % area. To ensure better pollination and fruit set other commercial mango varieties have been planted at every 10th line as pollinizers. 3. As an R & D programme Reliance has grown i. Total 110 mango varieties at Jamnagar which include ii. All the commercial mango varieties grown in all the states of India iii. 16 of exotics and iv. 25 newly released mango hybrids by various Research Institutes in India..

4. It is a treat to see mango trees laden with deep red fruits of Tommy Atkins variety imported from Florida and huge reddish yellow fruits of Keitt variety which can remain on the trees for about 40 days after full maturity unlike others where fruits fall down as soon as fully mature. 10.All the year round mangoes? Looking at the success of mango Sh Mukesh Ambani, our Chairman is now propelling us to develop technology to get mangoes all the year round. An ambitious R & D project on this is already under way and may be in near future mangoes could be available all through the year 11 Quality par excellence The quality of Reliance mangoes is par excellent. Our mangoes are being acclaimed all over India and many foreign countries and demand fast soaring.The specialities of Reliance mangoes are 1. Grown under dry hot arid conditions of Jamnagar in Sourashtra 2. Produced with latest World Class hi-tech management practices 3. Practically no use of chemical pesticides 4. Uniform and consistent fruit quality 5. Fully matured and naturally ripened 6. Spotless, attractively coloured without bruises 7. Excellent taste, flavour and aroma typical of Sourashtra Kesar 8. On full ripening yellowish with greenish shade 9. Very sweet with more than 200 Brix 10. Fit for table purpose, juice making and processing 11. Export quality 11 Mango as a business: Though India produces more than 53 % of worlds mangoes, our share in International mango trade is less than 1 %. Low productivity due to various reasons, lack of required infrastructure is the main bottlenecks in export of mangoes. The mango productivity in India is as low as 3 MT/acre as compared to some of the countries like Israel and Brazil where productivity as high as 8-10 MT/acre. Reliance target is to beat these countries in mango productivity. The experience during the last 2-3 years has been exhilarating and we may surpass this target and get 1012 MT/acre from 10th year onwards. With adoption of latest production and post harvest technologies Reliance is poised to make a dent in the export of mangoes. The initial experience shows that if latest production and post harvest technologies are adopted mango can be a very profitable business in India. Reliance Jamnagar mango is going to be revolution in Indian horticulture.

12. EurepGAP Certification and Export of Mangoes 1. Entire mango plantation at Jamnagar has been certified for EurepGAP we made the first trial export of Kesar mango during 2006. 2. Reliance Kesar mangoes were marketed through the renowned Harrods super market chain in UK with excellent feedback. 3. This year Reliance is exporting mangoes to UK, Germany, Holland, Japan and USA

With high productivity from the early age of plantation this unique and the biggest mango plantations in Asia is likely to revolutionize mango production and productivity in India.

PARIMAL NATHWANI Group President-Corporate Affairs Reliance Industries Limited Jamnagar