Types of Indian garlic: varieties, regions and which is best

Madhya Pradesh grows most of India's garlic: about 63% of the country's crop in 2021-22, around Mandsaur, Neemuch and Ratlam. Rajasthan is second at about 17%, mostly in the Hadoti belt of Kota, Baran and Jhalawar, next to Madhya Pradesh. Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat follow, well behind.

Plains garlic is a winter (rabi) crop, sown after the monsoon and lifted in spring. Hill garlic, from Ooty in Tamil Nadu and from Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, is grown on a longer cycle at altitude.

Most of the white garlic traded in Indian mandis comes from public varieties bred by the National Horticultural Research and Development Foundation (NHRDF) and from farmers' own local stock:

• Yamuna Safed (G-1): an early NHRDF white garlic, widely grown on the plains.
• Yamuna Safed-3 (G-282): a white garlic with large bulbs, selected from a Dindigul (Tamil Nadu) collection, which does well across northern and central India.
• Yamuna Safed-4 and Yamuna Safed-8: later NHRDF releases for the plains; Yamuna Safed-8 for tropical and sub-tropical conditions.
• Agrifound Parvati: a long-day hill variety (240–270 days) for places like Srinagar, Almora, Palampur and Ooty.
• Ooty-1: the Nilgiris variety from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University.

Farmers also keep local, desi stock. Garlic in the mandi is rarely sold by variety name; it is sold by size.

A variety is what was planted. A grade is how big the bulbs came out. The same field of white garlic is sorted into several grades by bulb diameter, and that grade, not the variety, sets the price. Bom (also written Boom) is the largest; AA the smallest we sort.

There is no single best garlic; there is the right garlic for the job:

• Peeling and processing at volume: the largest grades, Bom and AAAA, because bigger bulbs carry bigger cloves and less peeling per kilo.
• Retail packs sold on looks: Bom and AAAA, clean and uniform.
• Cooking, pickles and paste where price matters: AAA and AA, the same garlic in smaller bulbs.
• Export: white plains garlic in the larger grades, packed in mesh bags.

Hill garlic from Ooty and Himachal is sold on its name and carries a higher price; it is a separate market from the mandi grades above.

We buy white garlic from farmers in the Hadoti belt around our Asnawar plant, sort it into grades ourselves and pack it in 250 g to 50 kg packs. Ask for the grade by its millimetre range, not only its name, and say the quantity and where it should be delivered.