India pomegranate export season

India ships on more than one crop. The main harvest carries the export window from about September to December, and a second, thinner window follows in the Northern Hemisphere spring. Growers decide which crop a tree carries by forcing it to flower in a chosen season.

The system is called bahar. ICAR’s pomegranate research centre gives three flowering seasons: mrig bahar in May and June, hasta bahar in September and October, and ambia bahar in January and February. Bhagwa, the export variety, takes about six months from fruit set to maturity. The main harvesting period runs from September to January, which is when prices are lowest. Hasta bahar fruit comes in the spring and can run beyond March, and ambia bahar fruit matures in the middle of the year. For export, the centre recommends the late rainy-season and hasta crops.

Maharashtra grows more than half of India’s pomegranates, and Gujarat, Karnataka, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh are the other main producers. The first sea shipments to the US and Australia came from Solapur district. India exported 72,011 tonnes worth $69 million in 2023–24. The UAE, Bangladesh, Nepal, the Netherlands and Saudi Arabia were the main buyers.

Europe is the demanding market, and it is run through traceability rather than a treatment. Every farm supplying the EU is registered on APEDA’s AnarNet system for the bahar it is carrying. Exporters keep samples in cold store for 90 days, so that a residue finding can be traced back to the orchard. The United States takes Indian pomegranates only after irradiation at 400 gray. The first commercial sea shipment, about 14 tonnes of Bhagwa, reached the US East Coast in March 2025, within five weeks. Australia followed: the first sea shipment left in December 2024 and reached Sydney on 13 January 2025.

The spring and summer crops cover the months Turkey and Egypt do not, which is what makes India the origin a year-round pomegranate programme needs. The fruit stores for months, so as on every other pomegranate row here, the risk sits at the far end rather than at sea. ICAR gives 5°C and 90–95% relative humidity for storage, and storage trials for the US sea route gave 60 days of shelf life.

Rain is what moves supply. Bacterial blight, the disease that shaped the bahar choice, spreads fast above 50% humidity at 25–35°C and is carried by rain and wind. ICAR’s advice once it appears is to shift to the hasta crop. In the 2025–26 cycle, heavy rain disrupted flowering and fruit set in Maharashtra and cut output by about 20%.