Now, traders use Chinese ethylene powder to ripen mangoes

Nellore: Traders in city are now using China made ethylene powder sachets for ripening mangoes. Earlier, they used to ripen them using calcium carbide, and now they are preferring these packets that are available even on e-commerce sites like Alibaba. Recently, food safety officials collected samples from 3 traders in city in which two were found having the substance.

“Now, local traders are using Chinese Ethylene Powder sachets for ripening mangoes. They are not using calcium carbide for some time due to restrictions on its use. We also seize total stocks in case they use carbide,” said Srinivas, Gazetted Food Inspector.

Nellore is having mango crop in Gudur, Rapur, Naidupet, Venkatagiri, Sangam, Kaligiri, Vinjamur, AS Pet, and other upland mandals. According to the officials, mango gardens are spread in around 30,000 acres in the district. Out of normal yielding of around 2.40 lakh tonnes, now farmers are expecting 15,000-20,000 tonnes this year due to weather changes and also unfavourable conditions.

Due to scarcity of crop and availability of limited stocks  from other districts, traders were in a hurry to cash the situation thus resorting to speedy ripening of mangoes. In fact, vendors were allowed to use ethylene gas chambers to ripen mangoes. 

Ethylene liquid should be sprayed on mangoes and it would make mangoes ripen in a day or two making them suitable for human consumption as per norms of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI).

But, this is time taking and expensive process and now traders are using Ethylene powder importing from China for fast ripening. There are suspicions that whether it is real Ethylene or some other substance which affects people.

These sachets are available on e-commerce sites such as Alibaba at $ 10-15 per kilogram that costs around Rs. 700-1,000. But, this is powder form where traders should use liquid form to produce natural gas to ripen mangoes in favourable conditions. For every ten milli litres of ethylene liquid needs to be dissolved in 10 litres of water for spraying on the mangoes.

But, now traders allegedly were using ethylene powder directly sprinkling on the mangoes covering with tarpaulin or other plastic covers for one-two days and they get fruits with nice yellow colour though they are not fully ripen. This process is similar to Calcium Carbide which was being used earlier without natural sweetness.

“We have collected samples from Nellore, Kavali and Gudur very recently and sent them to Hyderabad for lab analysis. Normally, it takes 15 days to complete the process. After that we will be able to say whether local traders were using ethylene powder or carbide content,” said food safety official Srinivas.

By P V Prasad