Tantalising wait

As Himalayan farmers grow the country’s first asafoetida plants, changing weather threatens to play spoilsport

- RAJU SAJWAN LAHAUL-SPITI,

THE 30-odd saplings at Moti Lal’s farm seem inconspicuous. But he knows that in four years, these saplings on his half-a-hectare (ha) farm, located in the deep Lahaul valley of Himachal Pradesh and surrounded by snowcapped peaks, could nearly double his annual earnings of ₹2 lakh. “That’s, only if they survive,” says Lal, a resident of Margaraon village of Lahaul.

He is growing Ferula assafoetida, a perennial herb valued for its resin asafoetida (HEENG), as part of an initiative by the Institute Of Himalayan Bioresource Technology (IHBT), Palampur. “While handing over the saplings in October 2020, the officials said we would be the first in the country to grow HEENG and can earn ₹20,000-30,000 per kg of the spice,” Lal says.

Although asafoetida has a long history of use in India, both as a flavoring agent and folk medicine, every pinch of it is imported from the Mediterranean regions of Central and East Asia whose cold arid regions offer a suitable environment for the plant to thrive even in the wild. In 2019-20, India imported about 1,540 tonnes of unprocessed asafoetida from Iran, Afghanistan, and Uzbekistan for ₹942 crore; 90 per cent of it was from Afghanistan, as per IHBT.