The season’s first snowfall on Thursday wreaked havoc to apple orchards in Kashmir by causing widespread damage to the apple trees and the crop as well.The administration was caught napping over the weather predictions without issuing any severe weather advisory to the horticulturalists in the Valley. According to wire service—Kashmir News Observer (KNO), the farmers have hardly pruned roughly some 20 percent of their orchards, while as, maximum trees were yet to be pruned.The farmers in south Kashmir said that the plucking of apple crop got delayed this season due to the prevailing situation post abrogation of Article 370 in J&K and splitting it into two union territories. This was the second snowfall in the month of November in Kashmir in last one decade, which caused widespread damage to the mainstay of the Valley economy – horticulture.Reports from several parts of Kashmir Valley said that the massive snowfall today has caused widespread damage to the apple trees.Orchardist Imran Nabi Dar, 45, called the snowfall “a catastrophe” and said he had lost over 100 trees at in Shopian village on the first day of snowfall.
“Trees were yet to shed leaves, which became a reason that snowflakes remain accumulating on tree branches- which led their breaking,” he said.This snowfall has wreaked havoc in the entire south Kashmir, thus, huge loses to the farmers. “A tree takes two decades to mature and the snowfall has ruined our hard work of years,’’ Gowhar Abdullah, another farmers from Pulwama told KNO.An official in the J&K horticulture department said the department was still assessing the damages as the snowfall was going on from last mod night. An estimated 45 lakh out of Kashmir’s ninety lakh people are believed to be directly or indirectly dependent on horticulture, which has an annual turnover of Rs 8,000 to 10,000 crore.The snowfall plunged Kashmir into darkness, forced closure of the lifeline Srinagar-Jammu national highway, Mughal road and disrupted air traffic besides damaging orchards.In Srinagar city, a fire and emergency team was seen cutting tree branches at several places. A fire and emergency vehicle with huge elevator was put at Zero Bridge, Rajbagh to prune the branches of trees- including Chinar trees, which were posing threat to the public lives.(KNO)