Puttur: If one takes a view around Alakemajalu Ninnikal near Kabaka in Puttur, one can find a large jackfruit tree with branches spread over wide area. One can nearly find 80,000 grafted jack fruit saplings beside the tree in open area, ready for shipment to various locations across the country.It’s a splendid sight to view thousand of green saplings arranged in rows, to be picked and planted.

All these jackfruit saplings have something special in them as the jackfruit variety found in Kabaka cannot be found elsewhere. The size, aroma and the taste is unique and hence nationwide demand has grown over a period of time.

The credit of popularising the Kabaka variety of jackfruit goes to Anil, popularly known as ‘Jack Anil’ for his association with jackfruit. Anil inspired by the writings of Shri Padre, a renowned writer on agriculture related issues, especially jackfruit plunged into the activities of spreading the fragrance of jackfruit across the country and this has paid him rich dividend.

An expert in eye bud grafting, Anil has 30 special varieties in his fold and has succeeded in conserving around 200 different varieties of jackfruit over the years.

During this year Anil has plans to ship around 80,000 saplings to states like Andhra, Telangana, Goa, Tamilnadu and Kerala. Aiming to touch one lakh saplings next year, Anil has successfully grafted over 1.5 lakhs saplings since he took the grafting mantle on himself.

Jack fruit Journey

Kerala is known for adopting innovative methods in the field of agriculture. Jackfruit promotion council in the state is making every effort to promote jackfruit across nook and corner of the state. Specially designed vehicle carrying information on jackfruit touches the most remote villages of the state promoting the essence of jackfruit. Those vehicles carry jack saplings grafted by Anil who has plans to use the same model for promotion of his grafted sapling varieties within the state of Karnataka.

Anil’s association with jackfruit helped him earn the title ‘Jack Anil’, substantiated by jackfruit lovers flocking his nursery to buy a sapling with the hope of tasting sweet jack fruit one day in their own backyard. Rare variety grafting and conservation of special varieties go side by side though he does the former free of cost. Recognizing his work Kerala agricultural minister Sunil Kumar presented him a state award recently.