Sour mangoes?

So our hapoos or Alphonso mangoes have been banned in Europe and not just this king of fruits but four other veggies from India- eggplant, bitter gourd, snake gourd and taro. Why? Because 207 consignments of fruits and vegetables from India which imported into the EU in 2013 were found to be contaminated by pests such as fruit flies and other quarantine pests. This, they say will affect their salad plant multi million pound industry of cucumber and tomatoes.

This is a temporary ban and will come under review again before end of December 2014. Well, till then the mango festival will be long over and gone and those in Europe and UK, which has also supported this ban, will have to make do with frozen pulps which, they might find right to consume from cans.

UK imports nearly 16 million mangoes from India and the market for the fruit is worth nearly 6 million pounds a year. And to the EU, this is less than 5% of total fruits and veggies exported. This is sure to hit a lot of business, not just in India but in EU and UK. Well, the NRIs will come visiting India by June-July and hopefully they will be able to eat these fruits and veggies to their hearts content. But till then, they would have to only feast their eyes on pictures of delicious, juicy and fragrant hapoos. Wondering if those mangoes, which do not go to UK and EU will now be sold in India at much cheaper rates? Yes, we might get to feast on 'export quality' fruits for once!