An Economic Appraisal of Mango Processing Plants of Chittoor District in Andhra Pradesh

Abstract

Mango (mangifera indica L.) occupies a prominent place amongst the fruits grown in India because of its great utility, and is acknowledged as the king of fruits. Various types of products/processed food are prepared from mango like pickles, chutneys, amchoor, squash, nectar, jam, cereal flakes, custard powder, baby foods, mango leather and toffee. It is an outstanding source of Vitamin-A and Vitamin-C besides it has many minerals and other Vitamins. India with a production of 125.4 lakh tonnes of mango accounts for 40 per cent of total world production (312.5 lakh tonnes). About 2 million hectares of land in India is under this crop accounting for 46.2 per cent of world area (4.37 million hectares) under mango. Among the various states of India, Andhra Pradesh ranks first both in area and production and is followed by Uttar Pradesh. Mango is one of the important fruit crop of Andhra Pradesh cultivated in an area of 3.99 lakh hectares and producing 3.19 million tonnes (Government of India, 2005). The productivity of mango in Andhra Pradesh is 8.1 tonnes per hectare and is higher than the country’s average productivity of 6.1 tonnes per hectare. Mango is perishable in nature and due to unavailability of storage and transportation facilities, considerable amount of mango fruit goes waste every year. The extent of losses in mango is estimated to be 15 per cent (Atteri, 1994). One of the methods to avoid such losses of mango fruits is to process the fresh mangoes into different products. A number of processing firms operate in Andhra Pradesh, with Chittoor district accounting for largest share of the mango processing in the state. Most of the processed produce enters into the international market. Mango processing thus generates lot of income and employment opportunities in the region. However, low capacity utilisation, fluctuation in profitability of the processing firms is an issue often raised. It is also observed that the level of efficiency varies across size class of processing firms (Joshi et al., 1999). It is therefore essential to study the economics and profitability of mango processing in Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh. The present study is therefore, taken up with following specific objectives: (i) to study the status of mango processing and the nature of its forward and backward linkages; (ii)