Where mango grows in India

Mango grows across most of India's plains and plateaus, from sea level up to about 1,400 m according to NABARD, as long as the soil is deep and drains well and the flowering season is dry. Kew's World Checklist (read via GBIF) gives its native range as Assam and the eastern Himalaya to Myanmar, Thailand and south-central China, while ICRAF lists India, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Myanmar; a 2019 study in the Indian Journal of Horticulture notes that mango has been cultivated in India for about 4,000 years.

NABARD's mango guidance (on TNAU's Agritech portal) adds that there should be no high humidity, rain or frost during flowering. ICRAF gives a rainfall range of 300–2,500 mm a year and says the tree needs a dry season of more than 3 months to fruit well. For soil, NABARD asks for well-drained soil at least 6 feet deep with a pH of about 5.5–7.5, and Vikaspedia's mango calendar says to avoid waterlogged land and black cotton soils.

How it suits each part of India (our assessment, based on these sources):

• Grows well: the northern plains, the east, the north-east (its native area), central India, the east coast, the southern peninsula and the west coast on well-drained land.
• With care: the north-west dry zone, including much of Rajasthan, only where you can water it regularly, and low Himalayan foothills where frost is light. In a trial in the hot, dry climate of Bikaner at ICAR's Central Institute for Arid Horticulture (Singh and Bhargava, 2011), losses of young plants in the field differed a lot between plant types.
• Not suitable: the higher Himalaya, and any low spot where water stands after rain.

How to recognise mango

A mango tree is easiest to recognise by its long, leathery leaves and dense, dark green crown; ICRAF describes an evergreen tree up to about 20 m tall.

• Leaves: alternate, leathery, long and narrow (ICRAF gives about 16–30 cm by 3–7 cm), crowded near the branch tips (Flowers of India). New leaves are red and turn shiny dark green (ICRAF).
• Flowers: tiny, greenish-white or pinkish and fragrant, in large branched clusters (panicles) (ICRAF). In a study at Bihar Agricultural University, Sabour (Tiwari and colleagues, 2019), the first clusters appeared between late January and late February.
• Fruit: egg-shaped and slightly flattened, usually 8–12 cm long (ICRAF), hanging on a long stalk, with one large flat stone. In the Sabour study fruit took roughly 98–109 days from full bloom to maturity; TNAU gives the Tamil Nadu harvest as March to June.
• Bark: brown and smoothish with many thin cracks, becoming darker, rough and furrowed (ICRAF); ICRAF also notes a whitish latex from cut twigs.
• Look-alike: jamun (Syzygium cumini) also has glossy leaves with coppery new growth, but ICRAF describes its leaves as opposite (in pairs) and shorter, about 7–18 cm, and its fruit as small purple-black berries in clusters.