Umran

That figure is quoted often, but the three trials we could read are lower. At Bawal in Haryana (300 mm of rain, 13-year-old trees) Umran gave 46.6 kg and 38.6 kg. At Sardarkrushinagar in Gujarat it averaged 37.46 kg over three years. At Mondouri in West Bengal (5-year-old trees, 5 x 5 m) it gave 47.6 kg, second of 12 varieties. A well-watered, well-fed, pruned orchard may do much better, but no trial we found proves it. Ask for the yield records of a bearing Umran orchard in your own district before you plan on 150 kg.

It is a late variety. At Bawal it ripened from 5 to 28 March with the peak on 20 March, about 26 days after Gola's peak of 22 February. At Sardarkrushinagar it came in the third and fourth weeks of January, along with Kaithli. If you sell in March, you meet the end of the ber season, when other varieties have finished.

At Sardarkrushinagar the fruit weighed 30.9 g, the heaviest of 20 varieties tested, with the highest pulp-to-stone ratio and the lowest acidity. At Bawal the pulp-to-stone ratio was 22.05 in the first year and 19.0 in the second, the highest of the four. A ratio of 22 means about 96 g of every 100 g of fruit is flesh, which is the source of the 96% pulp figure often quoted for Umran.

TNAU's schedule for ber from the second year is 50 kg of FYM, 500 g N, 200 g P and 500 g K a tree each year, applied right after pruning in February and March. A high-yielding variety needs feed and thinning, or fruit size falls. If the tree sets more fruit than it can fill, thin the fruit early and keep the feed going, so the large fruit that sells Umran is not lost.

A 1986 CAZRI paper on Rajasthan ber cultivars says Katha looks almost identical to Umran of Haryana and Punjab and to Ajmeri of Gujarat. At Jodhpur it had 34 g fruit with 18.9 Brix and ripened late, in the third week of February to early March. That matters because Katha is one parent of Thar Sevika. The paper compares plant and fruit features only, so it is not a DNA test.