It's been a good season in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, India's orange hub. Orange production is estimated at a healthy 750,000 tonnes. But the atmosphere at Kalamna Mandi, the region's biggest fruit market, is depressing. The good crop has driven prices to the lowest in 10 years: from Rs 16-20 last season to Rs 7-10 this year.

Sitaram, 75, is the only farmer who has brought the produce to the mandi. "I have to sell two kilos to get what I got last year for one. What's the benefit of a good season?' he asks. Most farmers in orange hubs like Morsi and Katola in Nagpur and Warud in Amravati sold off their produce at the farm gate, not bothering to bring it to Nagpur markets.

The price crash has brought to light several long-term problems facing the region, which accounts for almost 60 per cent of India's orange produce. The total cropped area under orange in Vidarbha has come down from about 150,000 hectares five years ago, to about 100,000 now. In 2001, total production stood at 1,000,000 tonnes. Last year, it came down to 600,000 tonnes.

Fungus that ate the orange Fungal diseases, lack of agricultural research, weak marketing, and bad post-harvest handling are symptomatic of the rot afflicting Vidarbha's orange orchards. The decline in the cropped area is mainly due to a severe infestation by Phytopthora, a fungus. "It causes root rot, which has killed almost 8.3 million plants in the past eight years,' says Nirmaya Deshmukh, retired fruit crop scientist and a specialist in the Nagpuri santra . Who's responsible?

Farmers blame the public sector research establishment for not developing disease-free plant material. Baman Rao, an orchard owner in Morsi, says, "After the first Phytopthora attacks in the late 1990s, I searched for the right crop, but couldn't find any. Besides, blackfly, leaf miner and viral diseases are also proving to be unmanageable.'

Scientists, though, blame bad management practices of farmers. Shyam Singh, director of the National Research Centre for Citrus (nrcc) in Nagpur, blames a shift in climatic behaviour and bad irrigation practices. The orange crop thrives on two weeks of low temperature (about 10