The hop sprout story went viral after a tweet from an IAS officer accompanied by a report.
New Delhi:
Claims that a vegetable called hop shoots is grown by a farmer in the Aurangabad district of Bihar and sold for Rs. 1 lakh per kilogram is apparently false. After a tweet from an IAS agent with two photos and citing a report, the story was shared widely on social media, with many people talking about the conical vegetable online.
“A kilogram of this vegetable costs around Rs 1 lakh! The world’s most expensive vegetable, ‘hops’, is cultivated by Amresh Singh, an enterprising farmer from Bihar, the first in India. It can be a game-changer for Indian farmers ”. IAS officer Supriya Sahu tweeted on March 31. The tweet received over 24,000 likes and was retweeted over 5,000 times.
A team from the Hindi newspaper Dainik Jagran visited the Bihar village of Amresh Singh, the man at the heart of the story, on Friday and found that no such crop was being grown there. Local people said they had never heard of such a culture in the area, according to the report.
Contacted by phone, Mr Singh reportedly said the harvest was in Nalanda district, about 172 km away. When the newspaper team visited Naladna, he said the harvest was in Aurangabad.
Saurabh Jorwal, magistrate of Aurangabad district, told Dainik Jagran, “Some officials in Patna asked about the hop shoot harvest. There is no such crop in Aurangabad district.”
According to Jagran, Amresh Singh has grown black rice and wheat in the past, but not hop shoots.
NDTV also published an article based on the IAS agent’s tweet.
What are hop shoots?
Hops – called humulus lupulus – are perennials. Native to North America and Europe, hop shoots were considered a weed until their properties were known. According to the website agrifarming.in, the hop shoots have “antibacterial effects” and are used for “bitterness”, “aroma” and as a “stability agent in beer”.