Exotic flavors and unseen allies: Supporting pollinators for evolving urban diets

Walk into any upscale supermarket in Bengaluru, and you are likely to find shelves stocked with avocados, dragon fruit, blueberries and luxury chocolates. Food items once considered rare or exotic are increasingly becoming part of everyday diets.

With urbanisation and improved connectivity, dietary shifts are driven by the ease of access to a variety of ingredients and cuisines, as well as increasing health awareness and aspirational eating influenced by food trends.

Cities such as Bengaluru are at the forefront of this transition, reflecting global trends in urban food consumption. As people migrate to these cities from across the country, they serve as melting pots of cultural and culinary traditions and ideas.

Fresh produce sections in markets today cater to a clientele that is increasingly open to culinary experimentation. Local and traditional diets are often being supplemented, and in some cases replaced, by more diverse and globally inspired food choices.

The effect of the demand for new foods can be felt beyond supermarkets and city limits. It is reshaping the agricultural landscape. Farmers in Karnataka are actively cultivating high-value exotic crops, including avocado, rambutan and dragon fruit, with support from the state’s horticultural initiatives.

The area under exotic fruit cultivation in the state has grown significantly. The cultivation of dragon fruit, for example, has increased by 200 hectares in just one year and now covers over 430 hectares. There are good reasons for this trend.

Exotic crops fetch high prices and are often seen as climate-resilient alternatives as they require less water compared to traditional crops. For instance, farmers in drought-prone areas are choosing to grow dragon fruit instead of grapes, as it requires 80% less water. These factors, coupled with strong market demand, have made the cultivation of exotic fruit a lucrative opportunity.

The expansion of exotic crop cultivation carries with it an often-overlooked ecological vulnerability — reliance on pollinators. Several fruits and vegetables, including these exotic newcomers, rely on animal pollinators such as bees, flies, and bats for fruit set and optimal fruit quality. Without them, many crops would fail to produce viable yields or suffer noticeably lower yields.

Consequently, introducing crops into regions where native pollinators are either absent or inadequate can pose serious problems. While several exotic plants have demonstrated their ability to adapt to local pollination networks, others may require a considerable amount of time or fail to do so altogether. In such cases, farmers are forced to intervene manually to avoid huge losses.

Hand pollination, despite its increasing prevalence, is highly labour-intensive, time-consuming, rarely matches the efficiency of natural pollination, and may give rise to fruits that are lower in quality, with compromised size, shape or taste.

Dragon fruit, originally from central and southern America, is a type of cactus and, thus, unsurprisingly, has a low water requirement. Although certain varieties are self-compatible, fruit size and yield are better when cross-pollinated. The plant bears large, night-blooming flowers that are pollinated by nectar-feeding bats and hawk moths in its native habitat. The flowers typically close at the end of the night, but may remain open until the next morning if they are not pollinated.

In India, however, nocturnal pollinators have not been recorded. Instead, some species of honey bees have been observed pollinating the flowers the following morning. Despite this, natural pollination remains limited, and hand pollination is often necessary.

Avocado, on the other hand, presents a different set of pollination challenges. Native to Mexico and central America, it was introduced to India in the early 1900s. Its popularity has grown only in recent years due to its high nutritional value. Avocado exhibits a unique and complex system of flower opening that promotes cross-pollination between different groups of trees. Understandably, fruit set can prove to be a persistent issue due to this unusual flowering behaviour.

In the race to meet the growing demand, planting exotic crops in areas poorly suited to them not only jeopardises crop success but adds undue stress on farmers, many of whom already operate on tight margins. Without proper ecological planning, what starts as a promising market trend can result in distress sales and yield losses.

Urban gardening enthusiasts also contribute to this trend by growing exotic fruits and vegetables in their gardens. While the interest in growing food is encouraging, it highlights the need to raise awareness about the role of pollinators in ensuring a healthy harvest, no matter how small the scale.

As exotic crop cultivation increases, our dietary dependence on pollinators grows, even as pollinator populations face regional and global decline due to habitat loss, pesticide use, disease and climate change. Pollinator decline will have discernible impacts on agrarian economies such as India’s. Indications of yield limitation are already emerging for highly pollinator-dependent vegetables such as cucumber, brinjal and pumpkin.

Without targeted efforts to support pollinators, we risk creating food systems that are both ecologically unsound and economically fragile.

Pollination must be given due consideration in state horticulture planning. Pollinator support should be integrated into farming systems and mainstreamed through policy and public awareness.

Lessons from failing pollination in apple orchards in Himachal Pradesh underscore the urgency of this approach. The region is now implementing practices such as planting flowering strips to restore pollinator health.

Research indicates that proximity to wild habitats bolsters pollinator diversity and abundance. However, since not all farms can be located near forests, dedicated ‘set-aside’ areas and hedgerows can help create pollinator reserves within agricultural areas and orchards. Current efforts focus on installing bee boxes that cater to just one or two species of honey bees, overlooking the importance of supporting a wider variety of pollinators, including solitary and stingless bees.

Further, climate change-driven alterations can disrupt crucial plant-pollinator linkages by affecting key variables in the complex interplay between phenology, pollination services and disease transmission. This makes proactive planning even more critical.

In today’s globalised world, changing tastes are a reality, and the entry of exotic foods into our markets and diets is inevitable. The culture of food, after all, is constantly evolving, much like language, lifestyle, or fashion.

Foods such as potato, chilli and tomato, which are considered integral to traditional Indian cooking, were once foreign introductions. It is often difficult to draw hard lines between what is considered ‘native’, what is not, and to decide exactly when a crop has become naturalised.

Growing exotics locally may help decrease food miles, reduce carbon footprint, and support local livelihoods. However, unless guided through ecologically informed strategies, it can have unintended consequences.

Ultimately, food choices are personal, but it is important that consumers make those choices with a full understanding of their broader ecological and social implications.

The rise of exotic foods in Indian cities is not just a story of changing tastes and market trends, but also one of vital ecological interdependencies. As we embrace new foods and farming opportunities, we must also recognise and support the unseen allies that enable them.

Chethana V Casiker is a senior research fellow at ATREE. Sunil GM and Pavan K Naik are project consultants with the organisation. M Soubadra Devy is a senior fellow in resilient urbanscapes at ATREE. Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth.