India’s coffee output in the current 2016-17 season starting October will be lower by 9 per cent at 3.16 lakh tonnes (lt) over last year’s 3.48 lt on account of poor monsoon impacting the production in the key growing regions of Karnataka, the State-run Coffee Board said in a statement on Thursday.

In its latest post monsoon estimates for 2016-17, the Board has pegged the arabica output lower at 96,200 tonnes — down 7 per cent from last year’s 103,500 tonnes.

Board cuts figure Production of robusta is pegged lower at 2,20,500 tonnes, down 9.82 per cent from last year’s 2,44,500 tonnes.

The latest projections are one per cent lower than the earlier post blossom estimates.

Production in Karnataka is forecast down 10 per cent over last year, while in Kerala the drop in output is estimated at 8.58 per cent.

Similarly, the production in Tamil Nadu is estimated to be lower by around 4.25 per cent over last year’s output.

In Karnataka — which accounts for 72 per cent of the country’s coffee output — the maximum decline in production is seen in Chikmagaluru and Kodagu districts, followed by Hassan.

In Chikmagaluru, the production is lower by 13 per cent over last year, while the drop in output in Kodagu and Hassan is expected to be around 10 per cent and 5 per cent each.

Weather woes “The reason for reduction in production estimates of 2016-17 is attributed to the delayed blossom and backing showers coupled with high temperatures,” the Board said.

Also, the growers were unable to take up irrigations to top up the scanty showers due to drying up of most of water resources on account of two consecutive drought years.

“Further, the North-East Monsoon was sluggish, which may impact the bean size and final output. The crop loss, if any, due to adverse North-East monsoon will be accounted at the time of final estimation to be carried out after harvesting of crop,” the Board said.

Off-year cycle Apart from the weather conditions, the 2016-17 is an off-year for coffee crop in the country as the previous year happened to be a bumper year with a record crop of 3.48 lt. India is the sixth largest producer of coffee and accounts for around 4 per cent of the world output. More than 70 per cent of the coffee produced in the country is exported and major buyers of Indian coffee include countries such as Italy and Russia among others.

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