Veggie, fruit rates dip at APMC market

NAVI MUMBAI: A hot meal in an unusual chill Mumbai weather is what everyone would settle for. But this winter, you can jazz up your meal with a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, including exotic ones, which have started arriving at the APMC market. Guess what, these are available up to 20% lesser than what you pay on a normal day.

The list does not only have strawberries, Iran apples, and apple bore but also lesserknown persimmon and golden custard apple.

According to the traders at Vashi’s wholesale market, the prices of oranges and grapes have gone down in the last two weeks though the overall quantity of produce reaching daily is lesser than the previous years.

“The produce from the farmers is going directly to the bigger players these days. However, the rates of many fruits and vegetables are lower than what they were two weeks ago. On the other hand, the daily count of customers is not up to our expectations,” Ramashisht Jaiswal, a fruit trader, said. Persimmon, also known as Simran fruit in local markets, had started coming in by October-end, another fruit trader,

Rameshwar Gupta, said. “It comes from Jammu and Kashmir and costs around ₹2,600-₹2,800 per box of 14 to15 kg. It was a substantial jump from ₹1,500 to ₹2,000 two weeks ago. It is also called Japani fruit because it used to come from Japan until five years ago.”

The green custard apple has found competition in the golden custard apple.

“Golden custard apples are cheaper as they are more likely to have worms inside. They were initially sold for more than ₹100 per kg. Now, the fear of worms has scared people and hence, the demand has gone down,” trader Raj Chavan said, adding this fruit is preferred for making ice creams and milk shakes.

Wholesale prices see a drop by up to 20%; traders claim they might go up again with a further fall in temperature

Kitchen staples

Meanwhile, with the uptick in arrival from Gujarat, the overall prices of vegetables have dropped. Many of them are kitchen staples such as brinjal, tomato, bottle gourd, bitter gourd, pumpkin, and ivy gourd. Green peas too are cheap since they are coming in large quantities from Indore.

But these rates are for a short period, traders said. “Once the temperature further dips, the creeper plants will find it difficult to survive and the prices will again skyrocket,” Kailas Tajne said, adding the monsoon had spoilt most of the crops in Maharashtra.