The surprising story of the most expensive mango in the world, planted by chance and guarded 24 hours a day

The story went viral in 2021, amid the coronavirus pandemic. But even today the peasants do not get out of their amazement.

Four years ago, farmer Sankalp Singh Parihar traveled to the southern Indian city of Chennai in search of hybrid coconut seeds. On the train ride, he struck up a conversation with a man sitting across from him. When subject discovered Parihar was a farmer, he offered to sell him a special mango sapling for 2,500 rupees ($33).

Driven by curiosity, he decided to take a risk and buy it.

“I didn’t know what kind of mango it was, but I named it Damini after my mother and planted it.” said Parihar, who lives in the central Indian city of Jabalpur. “I cultivated it [el retoño] like a normal mango plant, but a few months later I saw that it had developed a nice red colour.”

When it became known that Parihar had a special variety of red mango on his farm, businessmen from the Indian cities of Surat and Bombay approached the farmer. “It was only when they offered me more than 21,000 rupees ($283) that I realized it was valuable.”

The special handle he had bought by chance was, in fact, the Japanese miyazaki mango, considered the most expensive mango variety in the world.

So they had to resort to nine dogs security – six of them German shepherd dogs – already four guards so that their crop would not be stolen (they have already been robbed).

“A Mumbai jeweler is willing to pay any price we quote. But I made it clear that we won’t sell it to anyone. We will use the fruits to grow more plants,” Rani told the Hindustan Times.

The couple have planted around 150 trees but so far only four are bearing fruit. They didn’t do everything together: first they planted fifty and then another hundred.

The Miyazaki are a ruby-colored fruit known in its best specimens as “Eggs of the Sun”. They are very expensive because their production is very low, so they are very rare and hard to find.

Second GS Kaushalformer director of horticulture department of Madhya Pradesh, it has a very sweet taste and is often used as a sweet treat in Japan.

They have been grown since the 1970s and 1980s in the city of Miyazaki (hence the name), Japan. They weigh more than 350 grams and have a sugar content of 15 percent or more.

Hindustan Times reported that Miyazakis are rich in antioxidants and contain beta-carotene and folic acid, which help fight eye strain and prevent low vision.