How This 75-YO School Dropout Invented a Mango Variety That Ripens Early and Is Frost Resistant

The air in Tarluwada village near Visakhapatnam is thick with the sweet aroma of ripening mangoes. A stroll down its narrow lanes is enough to soak in the season’s bounty. Between rows of laden trees, a farmer walks purposefully toward one in particular, reaching out to touch the green-gold skin of his prized harvest.

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At first glance, it may seem like any other orchard in Andhra Pradesh. But hidden among these trees is an astonishing secret: fruit that can endure frost, travel oceans, and still melt in the mouth like a summer treat.

This is the Amrutham Ice Fruit Mango — a rare variety that peels like a banana, scoops like ice cream, and defies the perishability of one of India’s most beloved fruits. 

Its creator, 75-year-old Kongara Ramesh, is not a trained scientist but a farmer and self-taught innovator whose curiosity and persistence have pushed him far beyond conventional boundaries. His story is equal parts agricultural breakthrough, personal resilience, and community service.

Planting the seeds of innovation

Born in Guntur district, Ramesh never had the privilege of completing his education. He left school after Class 8 to shoulder family responsibilities, but leaving classrooms behind did not mean abandoning learning. Instead, fields became his textbooks, crops his teachers.

He began noticing patterns — why certain plants responded better to stress, why pests devastated some plots but not others. Where others saw routine cycles of farming, Ramesh saw questions waiting for answers. In time, those questions led him to attempt plant breeding on his own land.

The Ice Fruit: A mango that changed the rules

The dream of the “ice fruit mango” began with a simple idea: could there be a mango that survived freezing and still delivered flavour? Exporters had long lamented that India’s famed Alphonso, Banganapalli, or Kesar could not withstand cold storage. Consumers, too, had only one season to savour them.

Ramesh envisioned something different — a mango that travelled far and lasted long, yet did not lose its essence. Over 12 years of careful crossings, he combined Amrapali’s sweetness and aroma with Chinnarasalu’s freeze tolerance and soft texture.

The result was Amrutham: slender and colourful, weighing 150–200 grams, with a sweetness of 22–25° Brix, and rich in vitamin C and carotene.

“Amrutham begins flowering in November and bears fruit in March, a month ahead of other mango varieties,” says Ramesh. 

“If early flowers are lost to strong winds or cyclones, there’s a reliable second and third round of flowering, resulting in consistent, high yields of up to 15 tonnes per acre.”

It wasn’t just science in fruit form — it was convenience. Farmers could store it indefinitely at -20°C. Children could peel it with their fingers and scoop the pulp like ice cream. Families noted its sweet-sour balance appealed across generations. 

For exporters, the fruit’s resistance to flies and chemical-free ripening meant lower losses and wider markets.

Along with Amrutham, Ramesh grows Hima Pasand — a small, juicy mango containing about 3.5 mg of carotenoids per 100 grams. Despite its short shelf life of just five days, it ripens early and reaches the market before most other varieties, securing a distinct seasonal edge. 

He also cultivates newer varieties such as Swagatham, and Goodbye, all registered with the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Authority (PPV&FRA), which grants them official recognition and legal protection.

Larger fruits, weighing up to 350 grams, produced thick, syrupy juice with a natural sweetness of 20–22° Brix — ready to drink without any processing.

A chilli revolution in Andhra

But mangoes are not Ramesh’s only contribution. His orchards also birthed breakthroughs in chilli cultivation, another lifeline of Andhra’s agriculture.

He developed three hybrids — Pandav, Arjun, and Arun — each registered under the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Authority (PPV&FRA). 

According to Ramesh, these varieties were designed not just for yield but for resilience in local conditions, offering farmers greater margins in a competitive spice economy.

Like his mango innovations, his chilli research blended flavour with durability, grounded in close observation and the farmer’s perspective rather than a scientist’s lab.

Science grown from soil

Some of Ramesh’s most striking insights emerged not from controlled experiments but from close observation.

On his farm, he noticed unusual bacterial colonies. Testing revealed they could destroy more than a hundred pests — a discovery that drew attention from researchers at Andhra University.

This led to research collaborations and practical applications, including a portable plant health testing kit now widely used in coastal Andhra Pradesh.

By any measure, these are not the contributions of a “typical farmer”, but of a scientist grown from soil.

From injury to healing hands

Ramesh’s life, however, has not been without trials. A serious head injury left him in chronic pain. Unable to find relief in conventional medicine, he turned to homeopathy. Where treatment worked, curiosity followed.

He began reading texts, consulting practitioners, and experimenting with remedies. In 1993, he opened a small homeopathy clinic near Visakhapatnam. Even as his agricultural experiments expanded, weekends were reserved for patients.

To this day, villagers throng to Tarluwada, seeking treatment free of cost. His daughter, Dr Pavitra — who pursued a BHMS degree inspired by him — now shares the work at their clinic, where thousands have received treatment over the past two decades.

Farmer and healer coexist within him, united by a common thread: the desire to find answers where others saw none.

Recognition and reverence

It took time for institutions to notice, but when they did, recognition followed.

In 2017, at Rashtrapati Bhavan, Ramesh received the GYTI SRISTI Samman, one of India’s highest grassroots innovation honours, awarded for his Ice Fruit Mango.

Years earlier, former President Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam had praised his mango during an exhibition in Delhi — soft-spoken encouragement that carried heavy weight.

Today, the Amrutham Ice Fruit Mango is whispered about in global fruit circles, making its way to NRI families in the UAE, the US, and beyond. He has distributed tens of thousands of saplings, enabling farmers to plant not just trees but futures that can weather the market’s unpredictability.

Where flavour meets resilience

To compare Amrutham with India’s storied varieties is tempting — but also reveals its uniqueness. Alphonso dazzles with aroma, Kesar seduces with sweetness, Dasheri pleases with tradition — but none can be frozen and enjoyed months later without losing their soul.

Amrutham isn’t here to dethrone these varieties. Instead, it broadens the story of the Indian mango, proving that even tradition can carve out space for innovation.

The legacy of a relentless learner

Looking back, the arc of Ramesh’s life is as layered as the fruit he cultivates. A boy who left school in Class 8 grew into an orchardist who blended two mango varieties to create a fruit unlike any other.

A farmer battling pests uncovered bacteria that could eliminate hundreds of them. A patient in pain became a healer to thousands. Along the way, he developed chillies, tools, and techniques that touched lives far beyond his farm’s borders.

When Ramesh walks through his orchards, running his fingers gently over fruit that might one day light up tables in Hyderabad, Dubai, or New York, he doesn’t see only mangoes and chillies. 

He sees proof that disruption can bloom anywhere — in a village farm, in a scarred body, in the hands of someone whom society nearly wrote off when he left school.

The Amrutham Ice Fruit Mango is his signature — but Ramesh himself is the larger story: farmer, scientist, doctor, innovator. A man who coaxed resilience from seeds, and in doing so, embodied resilience in his own journey.