Suruchi

Suruchi is a sister release to Suprabha from the High Altitude Research Station at Pottangi, Koraput, Odisha, under Orissa University of Agriculture and Technology, and like Suprabha it is a clonal selection out of the Kunduli local landrace. It is unambiguously a quality-over-quantity variety. Fresh yield is modest at about 11.6 tonnes per hectare, the lowest of the standard Indian releases, but it returns the best dry recovery of the group at 23.5% and the highest oleoresin of the older Pottangi selections at 10.0%, with 2.0% essential oil and only 3.8% crude fibre. That combination of low fibre and very high extractables is exactly what a dry-ginger and oleoresin buyer wants, so Suruchi is grown deliberately for processing rather than for the fresh market, on land where per-hectare tonnage matters less than per-kilo value.