Ashoka Shivareddy grew up in a farming family in Kolar, a drought-prone district in southern India, where making a living from the land proved extremely difficult.
“The area receives rainfall of only 60 to 70 centimetres, and farmers dig borewells of up to 1,300 feet – most of their money goes into chasing water,” he says.
After mounting losses, the family abandoned farming in 2005 and relocated to Bengaluru, where they opened a vegetable shop to make ends meet.
Shivareddy went on to become an AI software engineer but retained a deep interest in agriculture throughout his career.
In 2018 he returned to the family farm, this time armed with a more scientific approach to choosing which crops to grow.
“I was looking for a crop that could survive with very little water, grow with rainfall, and not depend heavily on pesticides,” he explains.
Custard apple, a knobbly fruit roughly the size of a large avocado with creamy, sweet flesh, proved to be a strong candidate for the dry conditions in his region.
Shivareddy planted trees closer together than on typical farms and carefully selected three varieties, each offering different benefits to maximise his overall yield.
“Last year I produced around 20 tonnes. This year, it’s about 25 tonnes. There is huge demand for custard apple in India and abroad,” he says.
Despite its resilience in dry conditions, the fruit presents real challenges for farmers, particularly around shelf life and seed content in traditional varieties.
The traditional Balangar variety can spoil within just three or four days, severely limiting selling options and making it less attractive to consumers due to its high seed count.
The seeds are also toxic when crushed, and the European Food Safety Authority has raised questions over the safety of food supplements based on custard apple.
“Traditional varieties have excellent flavour, but they suffer from low pulp content, high seed count, and a very poor shelf life,” says Dr Sakthivel T, principal scientist at Indian Institute of Horticulture Research in Bangalore.
His team developed a hybrid variety named Arka Sahan, which lasts up to a week at room temperature and contains fewer seeds and considerably more pulp than traditional types.
“The shift from 30% pulp recovery in wild varieties to 70% recovery in hybrids like Arka Sahan has effectively doubled the usable harvest for farmers without needing more land,” Sakthivel says.
Researchers at the institute are also working to prevent custard apple pulp from turning brown after extraction, experimenting with new equipment to maintain its milky colour for longer.
Maharashtra, in central India, is the country’s leading custard apple producer, accounting for almost a third of national output, and is home to farmer Navnath Malhari Kaspate.
Kaspate spent years travelling across India collecting seeds and cross-pollinating them on his farm, driven by a belief that the fruit deserved far more attention than it received.
“No one had really paid attention to custard apple or done research, so I decided to keep working on it. It takes 12 to 15 years to develop a new variety. This is not quick work – it’s decades of experimentation,” he says.
His efforts produced the NMK-01 variety, named after his initials, which went on sale in 2014 and is recognised for its high yield and durability during transport.
“We now grow custard apple on nearly 50 acres, with yields of about 10 tonnes per acre. This improved variety which does not get spoiled has created opportunity for exports. We started exporting to Gulf countries, and even sent it to Europe, something that hadn’t been done before at this scale,” he says.
Exporter Manoj Kumar Barai ships the NMK-01 variety to the US, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Europe, citing its thicker skin, longer shelf life and sweeter taste as key advantages.
Getting the fruit to International markets requires precise coordination across every stage, from harvesting to cold storage, airport transfer and customs clearance, with temperature control absolutely critical throughout.
Barai notes that road journeys are often completed overnight to avoid heat, with fruit pre-cooled for five hours before being packed into refrigerated vans and eventually air freighted in specially designed corrugated boxes.
Growing volumes are now being exported as pulp or powder, which Barai describes as a “revolution” for the export industry, enabling large quantities to reach overseas bakeries, ice cream makers and specialist cafes.
Back in Kolar, Shivareddy is planning to invest in his own pulp processing unit, though he acknowledges that chilling pulp to -20C requires significant capital and a shift in mindset for many farmers in the region.
“Custard apple sits in a strange gap. Demand is rising, but the farming hasn’t gone high-Tech as the crop is naturally hardy. It grows in poor soil, needs very little water, and survives on rainfall. Farmers don’t need expensive irrigation, sensors, or controlled environments so tech adoption stays low,” he says.