Food & climate
Farmers have made significant profits after using Chinese pruning methods to cut the mango trees in Sri Lanka, which differ from other methods.
Shantha Dissanayake, a mango farmer in northern Sri Lanka, has spent a lot of time worrying about elephants stomping over his mango orchards.
But he became even more scared when agricultural experts came from abroad and hacked his trees down to relative shadows of their former selves, according to a report that “Food & Climate” platform received.
“These outsiders came and hacked down all my trees to stubs with only a few leaves left. They looked close to dead,” he said. “However, this experiment has turned out a complete success,” he added.
After using Chinese pruning methods, mango trees are much shorter than before, with fewer but wider branches that allow sunlight to boost fruit quality and naturally prevent plant diseases. “Now I see that it works,” said Shantha, a 53-year-old man.
Shorter mango trees
Zengxian Zhao, the man who cut the trees in the first place, laughed at Shantha’s memory. “He was initially shocked, but he’s been convinced and is spreading the word,” said Zengxian, an expert on crop cultivation, dispatched by China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.
He was deployed in 2023 in this Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) project focused on Sri Lanka’s tropical fruit sector, aiming to boost the incomes of the farmers who produce bananas, pineapples and mangoes, high-value fruits that can flourish in the country.
“Here the farmers know how to make mango trees big, tall and very strong,” Zengxian said while chatting with Shantha on his farm outside Anuradhapura.
It has become a kind of exposition centre where Shantha’s neighbours come to learn about the new techniques being shared through the FAO-China South-South Cooperation (SSC) project.
“I explain and show Chinese pruning methods that are very different,” Zengxian said. “We are looking to make more of the plant nutrients flow to the fruits.”
Chinese pruning methods are easy to use by hand
Zengxian’s pruning method – which he has demonstrated to hundreds of Sri Lankan farmers at more than 30 sites around the dry and sparsely-populated North-Central Province – is manually simple. It follows a fractal logic wherein the crown of each mango tree is hollowed out and the number of spindles per branch reduced by half.
In essence, he serially splices the tree, starting at about 70 centimetres up the trunk, replicating the pattern of leaving four rather than the typical seven branches at each point to open the canopy in a way that enhances fruit productivity. Ultimately, the ideal is to have one tree with about 87 branches, each producing one or two ovoid-shaped mangoes, ideally weighing just over 500 grams.
Shorter mango trees make it easier to bag and pick the fruit at harvest, which is done by hand. Greater exposure to sunlight additionally reduces opportunities for invasive pests, lowering both labour requirements and agrichemical costs.
Shantha says that while gross yield per pruned tree has dipped somewhat, his net marketable yield has jumped by 50 percent, as he now obtains mostly prime-grade fruit whereas before the majority of his fruits were too small or irregular and had to sold at give-away prices.
Shantha describes himself as a convert to the new techniques he has learned and now plans to adopt them on the rest of his trees. He is convincing his brother-in-law Jayasekara to do the same on his nearby farm, where mango trees tower up to three times higher but with only marginal economic yields.
At the moment, Jayasekara uses a long bamboo pole to knock down fruits from the upper branches, which usually bruises them to the point where they have to be turned into chutney on the same day or perish. With shorter trees, this wouldn’t be the case.