Devgad's mango farmers save Aam & Janata with tech
Devgad mangoes tried many hacks with little success to prevent unscrupulous traders from mixing cheaper varieties with this premium variant of the hapus, or alphonso, mangoes.
They probably have a fix now.
Grown at Devgad in the Sindhudurg district of Maharashtra's Konkan region, these mangoes are known for their thin skin, rich aroma and superior taste. A dozen of these cost ₹1,000 to upwards of ₹3,500, depending on the size.
The price has made them vulnerable to faking. Cheaper varieties of mangoes from states like Karnataka, which are sold for just a few hundred rupees a dozen, are mixed with the Devgad mangoes to deceive consumers, hurting the brand, said Omkar Sapre, a board member of the Devgad Taluka Mango Growers Cooperative Society.
Experiments with sticking QR codes and barcodes on the mangoes and marking them with edible ink have turned out be of not much help — the codes could easily be copied while the ink was expensive.
Now, the growers have adopted a new, technology-enabled method.
They put a sticker on each mango with a unique code, with only half of it visible. «The front of the sticker has half of the unique number, and the rest of the number is behind the sticker when you tear it off,» said Prashant Yadav, who developed this method. «All you have to do is to send a photo of the seal along with the numbers behind the seal to the farmer's cooperative and you will get an authentication message which will identify not just the farmer, but also the part of Devgad the mango comes from,» added
