Analysis of Growth Trends, Regional Variations and Productivity Metrics of Apple Cultivation in Himachal Pradesh, India

Abstract

India has seen a spatial escalation on apple growth and it fostered the country’s economy and employment opportunities of the apple growing states. States of Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh are primarily known for apple production. Therefore, we worked on the secondary data on apple growth trends, its production from the different sources and analyzed it through growth rate, decomposition analysis and instability index techniques to quantify the production metrics and trend shift. Our findings reported that between1973–1974 to 2021–2022, there was an increase found in the global area, productivity and production of apples in Asia and India. The output of apples worldwide has found to be escalated at a compound annual growth rate of 2.51%, whereas, India has experienced a notable rise of 3.40 percent annually. The majority of the apple's area, output and productivity came from the Asian region, with growth rates of 3.38, 5.97, and 2.59 %, respectively. Furthermore, Worldwide scenario on apple cultivation reported that Poland had the highest relative instability in apple productivity (21.44%), followed by India (15.96%), China (12.53%), Turkey (11.18%) and USA (8.61%). Area yield effect was used to explain the rise in apple output in Asia, however, area expansion was found as the primary cause of increase in area under apple production. In Himachal Pradesh, Zone III has the greatest average yearly productivity (4.78%), followed by Zone II (3.35 %) and Zone IV (0.57%). In zones III and IV, the expansion of area (96.93%) and yields (85.13%) was the reason for the increase in apple production, however, in zone II, the yield effect (102.05%) was the only cause found for the increase in apple’s production.