Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Bitter cucumber: panel blames it on premature harvesting

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The preliminary report of the expert committee constituted by Kerala Agricultural University (KAU) to investigate the complaint that cucumber seeds sold to vegetable farmers in Thiruvananthapuram district were of the bitter variety has reported that premature harvesting is responsible for the bitterness.

A team of scientists led by Associate Director (Research) J. Arthur Jacob came to the conclusion after gathering evidence from farmers who had cultivated cucumber with the seeds sourced from the Kayamkulam regional centre of the university and sold through the College of Agriculture, Vellayani.

They also talked to scientists and officials of the Department of Agriculture.

The report states that the farmers had bought seeds of the yellow Mudikode variety that are harvested only after the gourd is fully matured. “The bitterness is not characteristic of the Mudikode variety. It could happen due to cross pollination with the wild variety. Only the green premature gourd is bitter; the bitterness disappears as the cucumber matures and assumes yellow colour.”

The committee observed that the yellow variety is widely cultivated by farmers in central Kerala. Of the 114 kg of seeds produced at the regional research centre of the KAU, 16.5 kg were distributed in Kayamkulam and 25 kg in Central Kerala. No complaint has been reported from farmers other than those in Thiruvananthapuram.

Committee members who visited the farms in Thiruvananthapuram said only the unripe gourds were found to be bitter. Mr. Jacob said all the farmers who had raised the complaint of bitterness were rearing the Mudikode variety for the first time. “They usually cultivate the green variety known in local parlance as the Sambar Cucumber that is plucked when the gourds are green and unripe. It is this system of harvesting that has led to the complaint,” he said.

But the farmers at Vellanad and other parts of the Neyyattinkara taluk said they had been let down by the seeds supplied by the university. “We cannot sell the cucumber at the local markets. Some of the farmers who tried to sell the gourds were even roughed up by traders and customers at the market,” Mohanachandran, who had cultivated cucumber on one ace of leased land, said.

He said the farmers should be compensated for the loss they had incurred.

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