Not so aam after all: How Alphonso orchards clean your air of CO2

Here’s one more reason to love Alphonso mangoes: Mango orchards in the Konkan belt absorb carbon dioxide equal to annual emissions from 2.1 million vehicles. These findings were published in a study by the Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR)-Indian Institute Horticultural Research (IIHR), Bengaluru.

The 106,210 hectares of Alphonso mango orchards in Maharashtra, Goa and Karnataka are helping fight climate change by sequestering 9.913 million tonnes (mt) of carbon annually. This is equivalent to the carbon dioxide emitted from burning 54,084 railway wagons of coal, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s greenhouse gas equivalencies calculator.

Maharashtra has the most area under mango cultivation and sequesters 9.743 mt of carbon. “The information on carbon credit for mango in this environmentally-fragile ecosystem is generated for the first time in this country,” said Dr. AN Ganeshamurthy of IIHR, lead author of the paper that was published in May, in the peer-reviewed journal, Current Science. Carbon sequestration is the long-term capture and storage of atmospheric carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas. Growing concentration of carbon dioxide can cause climate change as it traps heat in the atmosphere. “There is a lot of discussion on innovative methods to quantify ecological benefits of such plantations and how they absorb carbon,” said Anumita Roy Choudhury, executive director, Centre for Science and Environment, Delhi.

First Published:
May 21, 2019 01:05 IST

Source: Read Full Article