Mango — Langra

Langra (aam — Langra, لنگڑا) is the green-skinned mid-season mango Punjab growers plant for its distinctive sweet-tangy flavour. The ovate fruit, roughly 250 to 350 grams, keeps a lettuce-green skin even when fully ripe, with fiberless, lemon-yellow flesh that carries a subtle acid edge most other cultivars lack. That flavour profile is the honest reason to grow it: it gives a farm a recognisably different mango for fresh sales and lassi rather than another sweet-only crate. Customers who know Langra ask for it by name, and the green-when-ripe skin is a built-in label that sets it apart on a crowded stall without any extra work from the grower.

Where it thrives

Langra is a Punjab plains cultivar, at home in the hot, dry summers of central and southern Punjab. The species wants average growing-season temperatures around 24 to 30°C, a clear dry spell to set flowering, and deep, well-drained soil at pH 5.5 to 7.5; it tolerates drought once established but rejects waterlogging and salinity.¹ Mature trees handle brief heat, but young flowers and shoots die between roughly 4°C and 12°C, so frost-prone ground is unsuitable.¹

Role in the system

Mango is the long-lived climax fruiter of a lowland food forest, and Langra holds that emergent-stratum position for decades.² It forms a round, dense, multi-branched canopy that comes to dominate the upper layer, so design it as the patient climax over a maturing understorey of pioneers and secondary fruiters.² Flowering runs late winter into spring, pollinated mainly by thrips, flies and a few bees rather than wind.³ A practical note for pruning: in South Punjab trials Langra set most of its fruit on new shoots, so light annual tip-pruning keeps a steady supply of bearing wood, and chop-and-drop of those prunings as mulch feeds the soil beneath the canopy.⁴

Growing it

Three decisions decide success. Plant grafted stock, because Langra is monoembryonic and needs veneer or cleft grafting onto vigorous rootstock to stay true.³ Time irrigation to the bloom: water through establishment, then ease off before and during flowering, since overwatering then costs fruit quality and feeds leaf.³ Plan for alternate bearing after about ten years and even the swings with restrained pruning that protects new-shoot bearing wood.² Space vigorous trees 12 to 15 metres apart on good ground.³

What you get

Medium, ovate, green-skinned fruit with fiberless flesh and a sweet flavour cut by mild acidity, ripening in the mid-season Punjab window, broadly late June into July. Its market edge is that distinctive taste and the green skin that stays green: customers recognise it, and it sells well fresh and for juice and lassi rather than for bulk processing.⁴ One caution: the persistent green skin makes ripeness harder to judge by colour alone, so pick by softening, aroma and the slight fullness at the shoulders rather than waiting for a yellow blush that never fully arrives.

Sourcing notes

Buy grafted, named Langra trees from a reputable Punjab nursery; seedlings will not hold the flavour or the green-when-ripe skin. Set it as the climax over nitrogen-fixing pioneers and a faster secondary fruiter, and let it claim the emergent canopy as the planting matures. Because it bears on new growth, keep winter pruning light so you do not strip the wood that carries the coming season’s crop.

Sources

1. Heuzé, V., Tran, G., et al. (2017). “Mango (Mangifera indica) fruit and by-products.” Feedipedia (INRAE-CIRAD-AFZ-FAO).
2. Gilman, E.F. & Watson, D.G. (1994). “Mangifera indica: Mango (ENH563/ST404).” UF/IFAS Extension.
3. Crane, J.H., Wasielewski, J., Balerdi, C.F. & Maguire, I. (2020). “Mango Growing in the Florida Home Landscape (HS2/MG216).” UF/IFAS Extension.
4. Grewal, A.G., Zafar, M.S., Qureshi, M.A., et al. (2024). “Fruiting Behavior and Fruit Quality of Leading Mango Cultivars Grown in South Punjab-Pakistan.” Agricultural Sciences Journal.