Western Ghats Kokum Foundation - Organic Farming Association of ...

An Introduction to Kokum
Kokum (Garcinia indica Choisy) is one of the native underexploited tree spice. It is
mostly found in Konkan region of Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Surat district of
Gujarat on the West Coast of India and to some extent in the forests of Assam, Meghalaya,
West Bengal. In spite of its incredible medicinal and nutritive properties, kokum is
generally not cultivated systematically on orchard scale like that of mango, cashew nut etc.
It is mostly found as a kitchen garden plant or mixed crop in plantations of coconut, areca
nut, as roadside plants or in forest.
The common names for Kokum are Goa butter tree, Kokum butter tree, mangosteen
oil tree. In Hindi it is known as Kokum while in Marathi it is variously known as bheranda
bhiranda, kokamba, kokambi, ratamba, ratambi, tambada amba. In Tamil it is known as
murgal, murgal-mara and in Malayalam it is kaattampi kokkam in Kannada it is called
murgina, punarpuli, devana huli. In Oriya it is tintali and in Gujarati and Konkani it is Kokam
or bhirind. In Sanskrit it is variously known as vrikshamia, amlabija, amlapura, amlashaka.
In French, Italian and Spanish the name is spelt as cocum and in Portuguese it is known as
brindao or brindonna.
Kokum is a tropical evergreen tree, related to the mangosteens. A slender tree with
sloping branches, it reaches heights of 15m (50 ft). The thin bark is lined and the leaves
1/2
oblong. The dark purple fruit is round, about 4 cm (1 in) in diameter with 5 - 8 seeds. The
fruits are picked when ripe, the rind is then removed and soaked in the juice of the pulp and
then sun-dried. The kokum was hitherto difficult to cultivate, usually growing as solitary
trees in a tropical forest environment
Kokum flourishes very well up to an elevation of about 800 m from MSL. It requires
warm and humid tropical climate. It thrives well in coastal areas receiving over 250 cm of
rainfall. It grows well in lateritic, alluvial soils having depth of 1.0 m and pH of 6.7. The
locations where coconut and arecanut can be cultivated are suitable for kokum. Though
kokum can be cultivated as a rainfed crop, it can not be cultivated on hill tops like mango or
cashewnut. It can be grown as a monocrop or as a mixed crop in established coconut and
arecanut plantation. Kokum plants respond well to irrigation during summer. Ripe kokum
fruits harvested during April-May from a region/ locality and pool the produce at one point
for processing. Value added products like salted juice (agal), syrup (amrut) or dried rind
are prepared.
The precise statistics regarding area production and productivity is not available as
kokum is not planted in an organized manner. As per a base line survey in 2010, kokum is
grown on about 1000 ha area in the Konkan region with production of about 4500 MT
fruits. According to the survey conducted earlier by Chief Conservator of Forest out of the
total 46,600 Kokum trees in the state of Maharashtra; 43,000 trees existed in Ratnagiri and
Sindhudurg Districts. It was also reported that in South Konkan 1674 MT of Kokum fruits
were used for production of dried Kokum rind, 757 MT for preparation of Kokum syrup and
40MT for manufacture of Kokum butter. Research on production technology for Kokum is
being conducted at Dr. B. S. Konkan Krishi Vidyapeeth, Dapoli, Maharashtra, ICAR Research
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Resource Book on Kokum (Garcinia indica Choisy)
Western Ghats Kokum Foundation, Panaji - Goa