Cardamom

Cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum Maton) is one of the important spice crops that originated in the rain forest ecosystem that prevailed in the Western Ghats of South India. It is an understory, shade-loving, cool climate-adapted perennial rhizomatous herb plant and is known as Indian cardamom, which is known for its flavor and aroma, because of which cardamom was christened as the queen of spices, the king being black pepper. In India, cardamom is cultivated in Kerala, Karnataka, and parts of Tamil Nadu. The other cardamom-producing countries are mainly Sri Lanka and Guatemala. India has the largest variability and also the germplasm collection of cardamom. Cardamom growing in India is facing very serious threats – mainly due to the drastic changes in the climatic pattern, drought and heat causing very severe damages, while labor shortage and rising cost of production, lack of irrigation facilities, etc. are creating havoc. The forest ecosystem under which cardamom was thriving once is no longer supporting such growth due to the rampant deforestation and the hot winds that the region is facing during the summer months. This chapter looks at holistically the present scenario of cardamom growing in India. The chapter covers history of cardamom growing in India, cardamom taxonomy, botany, chemistry, crop improvement, biotechnology, crop management, nutrient management, pest-disease problems, harvesting and postharvest processing, products, functional properties, and medicinal and culinary uses. We tried to be all inclusive as far as the Indian work on cardamom is concerned, tried to include at least most of the work carried out in the above-listed areas. For a more detailed discussion on cardamom, please refer the monograph Cardamom: The Genus Elettaria (Ravindran PN, Madhusoodanan KJ. Cardamom, the genus Elettaria. Taylor & Francis, London, 2002) and the more recent compilation, Cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum (L.) Maton (Ashokkumar et al., Front Sustain Food Syst, 2021).