MADURAI: Flower traders in Madurai and farmers are in a fix as intermittent rain, which lashed the district for the past few days, has been playing spoilsport with their business when lockdown relaxations were eased and temples were opened. They said they had a good supply of flowers during the lockdown, and a kilogram of jasmine sold for only Rs 200/kg, and now it is selling at Rs 700/kg, but there are no flowers.
The president of the Madurai Meenakshi Flower Market, S Ramachandran, said that the traders had been waiting for temples to reopen as there was a huge supply of jasmines. “Ten days ago, we had a daily supply of 25 tonnes of jasmines. But now the prices have increased to Rs 700, but we got only two tonnes of flowers on Saturday,’’ he said. Rain has resulted in the jasmine buds turning soggy and falling off the plants. If there was no rain, we would have sold the buds for not less than Rs400/kg this week, said Perumal, a farmer from Thirumangalam. He has not been able to pluck flowers because the rain had damaged the flowers.
Ramachandran says that the uncertainty during the lockdown has led to this situation. Farmers usually prune and maintain the crops for this season, “But this year, it was not done due to heavy losses and now they are incurring more losses because there are no flowers,” he said.
Usually, this is the season and flowering is also at its peak. “The month of Aadi is the time when jasmines are sold in large quantities to the temples as people make offerings with just jasmine flowers. But this year, there will be no flowers for two weeks from now,” he said.
