Go Mango

"George Bush's effort to lift the 18-year-old U.S. ban on importing Indian mangoes accelerated last year during a visit to India when, after biting into the peachlike flesh of an Alphonso, he said to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, "This is a hell of a fruit!" The President's enthusiasm proved fruitful for the two countries--the first shipment of Alphonsos arrived in New York in May--but the diplomacy has spawned unintended consequences.

"Definitely a war!" claims Mohan M. Shah, a New York businessman whose family orchard in Bhagalpur, Bihar, one of India's poorest regions, contains more than 4,000 trees producing the savory Langra mango. "America's appetite for mangoes is now 250,000 tons a year, and it can easily double with Indian mangoes being allowed in. But where are these mangoes going to come from, and at whose expense?""

Good Forbes article on the mango boom in India