Miguel Braganza
The refrain of the song by the Cavaliers in the 1960s was, “Love is a mango that grows on a tree: wait till the mango is ripe” is imprinted in my head. I was a primary school student then and neither interested in love nor in ripe mangoes. The moment raw mangoes were big enough to eat they were brought down from the tree with a stone or a piece of roof tile. We actually carried salt wrapped in paper in our pocket to school. One never knew when one would spot a raw mango on a tree en route home after school.
The sight of huge seedling mango trees at Ambeamni on State Highway 1 at Karaswada (originally Carrasco vaddo), Mapusa caught my attention last week. The sudden chill in the night temperatures in January may well make 2026 a bumper crop year. We now have three mango varieties with G.I. for Goa: Mankurad (Malcorada), Manga Hilario and Mussorad (Monserrate). The crop will depend on how we protect the flowers from fungus that will proliferate in the moisture of the dewfall. There are also the pesky mango hoppers that suck on the flowers and aggravate the fungal diseases with their sugary piss. Finally, the fruit-fly maggots or worms literally take the ripe mangoes out of our mouth.
The burning of stubble and straw from the paddy combine harvesters has created the smudging effect or smoke to induce flowering in mango. Besides triggering flowering in mango trees, it keeps mango hoppers and other insect pests away. This year it has come complimentary from the increasing area under rice cultivation across Goa, thanks to mechanisation led by Fr. George Quadros, the ‘Father of mechanisation in agriculture’. The residual population of the mango hoppers can be controlled by spraying the mango tree trunk (but not the leaves and flowers) with warm rice water or laundry starch with or without Beauvaria bassiana (Baba, Biocure-F, etc) formulation or Dichlorvos insecticide between 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. when the hoppers rest in the shade. Hang a fruit-fly pheromone trap on a branch at chest height when the mangoes are about to mature, say in March.
Powdery mildew or murem is a major cause of scorching in mango flowers and fruit drop from pea-size to maturity. Anthracnose is another fungal disease in mango. People attribute it to mist or molbailo dou but it is only an aggravating factor because it promotes the fungal growth. For those who use chemical control, wettable sulphur is the best option. It has to be obtained from the mango belt in Maharashtra or Karnataka because it is rarely used in Goa.
Fortunately, that is changing after a college of agriculture was established in Goa 10 years ago and microbial formulations could be popularised through their alumni, especially Liza Pinheiro, Priyanka and Vandit Naik, and Estella Pires. A formulation of the bacteria Pseudomonas flourescens is available in Goa as Sparsha or its powder form known as Bio-Jodi. Mix five ml (approximately one teaspoonful) of the formulation in one litre water and spray to wet the leaves and flowers. A repeat spray is recommended after fifteen days to control residual infection. The bacterial survives and multiplies with the moisture from the dew.
