Choice citrus fruit with medicinal properties

By Our Agriculture Correspondent

CITRON (CITRUS medica) is a well-known fruit of the citrus family in South India. Also known by the names "mokri", "turanj", "mahalung", "madavala" and "narthangai", citron has immense medicinal value and is used in several indigenous medicinal preparations. It grows as a large shrub or small tree with short stem and straggling branches.

A precocious bearer, citron has a potential to yield as many as 2000 fruits a year. A ten-year old, luxuriant tree in a home garden in Tiruchy has yielded more than 2000 large fruits in a year.

The tree produces large glabrous leaves, which have purplish tinge when young. The fruits are large 15 to 25 cm long and 5 cm in diameter. They have thick, softy and warty rind, which is the part used for making sweets, as candied peel, and in confectionary. The juice sacs are small and slender and the scanty juice is acidic and bitter. The rough-skinned fruits in the size of sweet lime are light in weight and about 15 fruits will weigh one kg.

"Citron is not grown commercially, but a few trees in an orchard and home gardens are useful additions. This important citrus fruit is believed to have originated in India, but there are great possibilities that it had hailed from Southeast Asia, where it is known to have been cultivated since remote antiquity. It first reached Europe in third century BC, and it is ranked as the first of all citrus cultivars. It is also described as the Persian apple by some early workers," says Mr. K. Thanigaimani, a horticultural expert in Chennai.

Citron is raised through seeds and stem cuttings. Layers got from proven mother plants are also found to do well. In the initial years, it is easy to work upon and grows profusely. Some nurserymen use it as rootstock for propagating other citrus varieties.

But it is not a good rootstock, considering its high vulnerability to most diseases and short orchard life, according to Mr. Thanigaimani.

The young plants should be nurtured well in well dug out pits filled with liberal quantities of organic manure. Vermi-compost and well ripe farmyard manure are ideal for promoting early vigorous growth. The trees with stout spines in the trunk and branches grow to a height of about 3 metres. When fed well and irrigated copiously at regular intervals, the trees start bearing 4 to 5 years after planting.

Care should be taken to ensure adequate drainage, and the trees should be protected well with sound integrated pest management strategies, and botanical pesticides.

The fruits will be borne in a few flushes every year. Each flush can yield up to 150 to 200 fruits on an average. Well-tended trees in home gardens have recorded much higher yields, according to Mr. Thanigaimani.

There is also a small variety of citron, which yields smaller and smooth-skinned fruits, and these oblong-oval fruits with thinner rind are not useful like the larger variety.

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