By Dr S. Bashir Ahmad Veeri

On September 21, 2026, growers, buyers and other stakeholders from across the Kashmir Valley gathered at a Buyer-Seller Meet held at the Sher-i-Kashmir International Convention Complex in Srinagar. The meet was presided over by Agriculture Minister Javid Ahmad Dar and attended by several legislators representing agrarian constituencies of Jammu and Kashmir. Discussions centred on the persistent bottlenecks affecting the horticulture supply chain, particularly in post-harvest management, logistics, market access and value realisation for growers.

The meet also highlighted a larger shift underway in the sector. Jammu and Kashmir’s horticulture economy is moving away from a model built primarily around orchards and seasonal trade towards an integrated value chain in which productivity, quality, storage, processing, branding and market linkages matter as much as the fruit itself. The task now is to ensure that this transition actually improves efficiency and competitiveness while increasing the share of value that reaches the grower.k

The sector already carries considerable weight in the regional economy. It generates close to Rs 10,000 crore annually and supports more than 35 lakh people, directly or indirectly, across over seven lakh families. According to the roadmap released by NITI Aayog, horticulture accounts for nearly seven per cent of the Union Territory’s Gross State Domestic Product, a share that few other sectors of comparable size can match.

The most visible change is taking place inside the orchard itself. Traditional apple cultivation relied on large trees, wide spacing and a long wait before the first harvest. High-density plantation works differently. It uses dwarfing rootstocks, closer spacing, trellising, canopy management and fertigation, with the aim of improving productivity and fruit quality while making more efficient use of land and water, rather than simply adding........

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