Mango requires an average temperature of 10°C-28°C and average annual rainfall of 75 cm- 250 cm. Rain, fog or cloudy weather at the time of flowering affect the yield and encourage the incidence of pests and diseases. It is grown on a number of soils, although clayey loams are the best suited. Both desi and grafted varieties are popular.
The desi variety raised from seeds takes longer time (5-7 years) to bear fruits. In grafted variety the plant starts bearing fruits in three to four years. Here fruits are of comparatively better quality. Seeds are sown in June-July and when the plant is of one-year old attaining the height of 45 cm it is grafted with full grown tree and transplanted in the orchard.
The tree continues to bear fruits for 30-40 years after which the yield starts declining. The flowering starts in January and the fruits ripen in June-July.
Uttar Pradesh is the leading producer of mango in the country contributing about 33.2 per cent of the total area of mango in the country. Other important producers include Bihar (13.3%), Andhra Pradesh (13.4%), West Bengal, Orissa, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Madhya Pradesh, Kamataka, Tripura, Punjab, Assam, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan.
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About 1000 varieties of mango are found in the country of which only 30 are of commercial importance. Some important varieties include dasahari, langra, safeda, safeda-Lucknow, Malihabadi, Mumbai green, Mumbai yellow, fazli, chausa, gopalbhog, rataul, sirauli, malda, hushnara, baramasia and sinduria etc in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana; hemsagar, maldah, fazli, Calcutta and Murshidabadi in West Bengal; alphonso, aman dasahari, gulab-khas, langra, Krishnabhogandaman abbasi in Bihar; alphonso, pairi, rajapuri and kesar in Maharashtra; suvarnarekha, nagulapalli, kottapalli, jahangir, kabari, desavathi in Andhra Pradesh; alphonso, mundappa, neelum, alourbeganpali, dhuful and khudabad in Tamil Nadu, and Kamataka; and alphonso, mankurad and Fernandes in Goa.
Major part of the produce is consumed locally for eating purposes and for making squashes, pickles, chutneys and murabba etc. Some mangoes are exported to the U.K. and Gulf countries. Mango products are exported to Canada, the U.S.A. and European countries. In 1972-73 Indiaexported 1,873 tonnes of fresh mangoes (value: Rs. 8 lakhs) and 15,000 tonnes of mango-products.
Cachar, Nagaon, Sibsagar and Lakhimpur districts); Madhya Pradesh (East Nimar district), Orissa (Puri, Cuttack and Balasore districts), Bihar (Vaishali, Champaran, Saran, Muzaffarpur, Darbhanga, Bhagalpur districts), Meghalaya,
(Table 1 l.XXIV). The production duriag the same period has recorded still higher increase of 10.5 per cent per annum (124.25 lakh tonnes in 1998-99). Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh together account for about 50 per cent of the total area and over two-third of the total production of banana in the country.
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Tamil Nadu with 16.67 per cent of the total area and 26.23 per cent of the total production of banana in the country comes on the second place. Here Thanjavur,Madurai,Coimbatore, Salem, Kanniyakumari and Tiruchchirappalli districts are the main producers.
Maharashtra (area 18.92%, production 28.5%) occupies first place in banana production (Table 11 .XXV). Jalgaon district alone supplies 80% of the state’s output. Other important producers include Akola, Amravati and Buldhana districts. Gujarat (area 4.05 per cent; output 9.76 per cent) is the third largest producer of banana in the country whose bulk of the supply is derived from Surat, Vadodara and Kheda districts. Andhra Pradesh provides 10.13 per cent of the total area and 8.58 per cent of the total production of banana in the country. Here bulk of the supply comes from Krishna, Vishakhapatnam, East and West Godavari districts.