Ladakh’s apricot lifeline challenged by a changing climate

Nusrat Rehman can’t wait to be home from school. It’s summertime in the otherwise cold and arid Kargil in Ladakh, where the 10-year-old lives. It’s also the season to harvest her favourite fruit – apricots.

When the finishing bell at her primary school rings, Rehman bounds down the hill and crosses the Suru River into her neighbourhood. “I cannot wait to pluck and eat the fresh apricots from our orchard!” she exclaims.

Between the summer months of July and September, her usual routine after school, like most other children in the region, is to help older women from the community harvest apricots in their orchards.

Nusrat (in yellow) and her friends on their way to the apricot tree in Kargil (Image: Avidha Raha)

Ladakh is the biggest producer in the country, accounting for 62% of India’s total apricot yield, as per government data.

In Ladakh’s stark, high-altitude desert, where the growing season is brief and the winters are long, apricot trees are not ornamental additions to a household. They are foundational, woven into daily survival, local economy and cultural identity. While they are consumed as fresh fruit in summer, dried apricots sustain households through winter, when communities can be isolated for months. They provide both calories and essential nutrients when little else is available.

But climate change may be threatening this pivotal relationship between Ladakh’s people and apricots. Irregular and increased rainfall, as well as decreased snow in winter months, are changing this fragile environment.

“Last year due to intense rainfall and snowfall, there was a huge loss of apricot flowers in the region,” says Sonam Lotus, director of the India Meteorological Department of Jammu and Kashmir. “The rainfall is for a short time, but it’s heavy and intense, which is affecting Ladakh especially during the months of July and August.”

A way of life

Apricots thrive in Ladakh’s dry climate, requiring relatively little water compared to other crops. Over generations, families have learned that these trees are among the few reliable biological assets in an otherwise fragile agricultural system.

Not one part of the fruit goes to waste. The seeds yield kernels, which are pressed into apricot oil used in cooking, as well as for medicinal and cosmetic purposes. In a region where supply chains are uncertain, apricots function as a self-contained food system within each household.

Beyond sustenance, apricots are one of the few dependable sources of cash income in Ladakh’s rural economy. Families sell surplus produce: primarily the dried fruit, but also value-added products like oil, jams and juices. In recent years, with growing recognition and commercialisation of Ladakhi apricots as a premium product, these orchards have also connected remote households to wider markets.

“Apricots are a huge part of Ladakhi culture,” says Stanba Gyaltsan, co-founder of the social enterprise Ladakh Orchards. “I think the apricot dessert [Phating] is the only traditional dessert of Ladakh.” “I would say apricots are the means to keep us connected with relatives who lived far away. Whenever they would visit us, or we would visit them, we would take apricots with us as an offering or gift,” he tells Dialogue Earth.

A woman sun dries a batch of homegrown apricots on her rooftop in Suru Valley, Kargil (Image: Avidha Raha)

Apricot trees are often inherited across generations, standing as living markers of lineage, land ownership and continuity. “Right now, the trees we have are mostly planted by my grandfather almost a hundred years ago. We are still reaping the fruits of his labour,” Gyaltsan says.

Anuja Dasgupta, artist and the other co-founder of Ladakh Orchards, stresses the importance of traditional farming in sustaining the sense of community.

“All the orchards and farmlands we work with, still do continue some form of traditional agriculture in terms of labour. It’s shared labour. So, there is always some kind of coming together, not just for farming but also for different moments in a family’s life, like celebrations or grieving,” says Dasgupta. Ladakh Orchards works with farmer families over a 100-km stretch, from the Sham to the Aryan valley.

These familial practices are more than agricultural routines; they are repositories of memory. Knowing when the fruit is perfectly ripe, how to cut it for optimal drying, or how to store it through winter are all forms of inherited knowledge.

For the harvesting season to be timely, the most significant part comes just before springtime, when the white and pink flowers bloom. Late March to early April usually brings the blossom, when the trees turn pink after months of barren winter.

Snow-covered apricot blossoms, Sham valley, Ladakh, April 2025 (Image: Ladakh Orchards)

But spring last year wasn’t as anticipated. April saw both snow and rain, Gyaltsan says. As a result, Ladakh Orchards faced serious production issues.

“It rained heavily for an entire day, and all the blossoms fell off in just one day. Production was very little last year. It was not just in our village, but the entire Sham valley and Aryan valley. Most of the farmers in that area lost up to 40-50% production,” he says.

In 2026, Ladakh barely had a winter, with a warmer than usual spring. If such drastic changes in weather are to continue, temperate weather fruits like apricots will need to be grown in higher elevations, Kunzang Lamo, a local scientist, told Down To Earth.

Disrupting an ancient but fragile system

Extreme weather is disrupting traditional farming practices, says Dasgupta.

“Traditional agriculture is absolutely attuned to the seasonal rhythms that have existed for time immemorial. But now that the timeline is shifting so rapidly, we have practically no guidance as to what to expect,” she adds.

Gyaltsan compared his farm to orchards in the neighbouring state of Himachal Pradesh where large nets are installed to reduce the impact of severe precipitation.

“In Himachal, they have nets which can cover the entire orchard. Unfortunately, we have not been able to do anything of that sort yet, but hopefully, we can work towards that,” Gyaltsan says.

As Ladakh gets ready for another apricot harvesting season, last year’s memories weigh heavy on locals. Due to erratic snow and rainfall, the apricot blossom suffered heavily in 2025, affecting the apricot produce as well. Multiple apricot farmers in the region took to social media to show their ruined apricot trees and to ask for damage relief.

According to data from the India Meteorological Department, Ladakh recorded a historic amount of rainfall in the month of August 2025, nearly 930% more than normal, making it the wettest August in recorded history. Leh, the region’s capital, received around 55 mm rainfall, ten times over its monthly average of 5.6 mm.

Floodwaters damaged infrastructure, cut off roads and flights, and isolated villages. The extreme rainfall also exposed the fragility of Ladakh’s ecological and agricultural systems.

This volatility is particularly dangerous in the Himalayas, where fragile terrain, loose soil, and glacier-fed systems make landscapes highly sensitive to sudden climatic shifts.

According to AP Dimri, director of the Indian Institute of Geomagnetism, changes in weather systems, known as “western disturbances”, may be the cause of the erratic precipitation.

These originate around the Mediterranean region and travel eastward toward South Asia. They carry moisture and cold air, and when they reach the Himalayas, they usually bring snow in winter and light rain in some regions. Historically, Ladakh being in the rain shadow of the Himalayas received very little precipitation from them. But this pattern is changing.

Earlier, a western disturbance would die by the time it crossed a major part of northern Himalayas. Its energy would be lost by the time it reached the elevation of Ladakh, which is supposed to be a cold desert with very low precipitation.

“Western disturbances used to travel in the lower elevation, but now because of climate change, it has more energy and is flying high. It [now] crosses Pir Panjal, crosses Zanskar, and dumps at Ladakh,” Dimri says.

Dimri urges that adaptation to this changing climate is critical for the local population.

“When you start living in a new set of rules defined by that particular place, you keep adapting, keep changing your lifestyle, your food habits. That’s what [the] Ladakhi [need] to do,” Dimri says.

As the 2026 apricot harvest season nears, Gyaltsan is anxious but hopeful.

This year’s springtime blossom season was nothing like last year’s. Not only was there no snow, 2026’s April was unexpectedly warm, resulting in apricot blossoms blooming a few weeks earlier in March.

“It’s really becoming unpredictable,” Gyaltsan says. He now hopes this change in seasons doesn’t impact his incoming harvest.