Sea Buckthorn in India: Where It Grows, Uses, Price

Figures read on 21 October 2026. IndianAgri does not grow, process or sell sea buckthorn; we connect buyers, sellers and people setting up units, and say so wherever we make an offer.

There is no single standard Hindi name in the sources we read. In Hindi it is mostly just called सी बकथॉर्न (sea buckthorn). The local names are older and more useful:

• Ladakh: Tsermang and Sastalulu in Ladakhi, and Leh Berry in English (Flowers of India).
• Himachal Pradesh and elsewhere in the Himalaya: Chharma, Amli, Sarila, Tirku and Sarma are listed as vernacular names by the Foundation for Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions (FRLHT ENVIS), which does not say which name belongs to which language.
• Scientific: Hippophae rhamnoides is the common species; the Ladakh plant is listed as subspecies turkestanica. NIFTEM's DPR calls the crop "cold desert gold".

The Hindi version of this guide is here: सी बकथॉर्न को हिंदी में क्या कहते हैं.

As described in NIFTEM-Thanjavur's model DPR (p5):

H. rhamnoides is the species picked and processed in Ladakh. The DPR's table also records which species grows in which state.

NIFTEM's DPR gives this area table (p4):

Ladakh's figure comes from a satellite estimate: 7,184 ha of pure stands and 2,083 ha mixed with other plants. Arunachal Pradesh is named as a growing area but has no figure in the table.

Two cautions on these numbers. First, NIFTEM says plainly that "there is no production data available": the area is an estimate and the ~600 tonnes is what gets harvested, not what grows. Less than 5% of Ladakh's resource was harvested in an average year. Second, the figures do not agree everywhere: Ladakh's Lieutenant Governor put Ladakh at "nearly 64%" of India's sea buckthorn area when opening the Centre of Excellence at Nimoo in December 2025 (UT Ladakh release). Both agree Ladakh is by far the largest.

Places in Ladakh named in the UT's own releases: the Choglamsar forest near Leh, where it "grows extensively"; Nubra Valley, proposed site of a national research centre; and in Kargil, Sankoo and Taisuru (berries harvested) and Suru and Zanskar (pulping).

The fruit stays on the bush from August to April, but it is harvested from September to the end of November, when the colour shows it is ripe and the juice reaches up to 12 °Brix (NIFTEM DPR, p7). UT Ladakh timed its 2026 conclave for 18–19 September because that is the peak of the season.

Why picking is hard. The berries sit tight on very thorny branches. The DPR describes two methods: beating the branches, or breaking off fruiting branches. Ladakh's Lieutenant Governor said in September 2026 that because of this, almost 85% of the annual crop is wasted and only about 15% is used commercially; he set a target of 50% this year (UT Ladakh, 18 Sep 2026).

Yields quoted in the DPR (p7–8):

Fresh berries spoil fast. They should be cooled to 4–6 °C straight after picking and frozen (IQF) if they must be kept longer.

The DPR lists ICAR's standard practices (p6–7). In short:

• Planting material: hardwood stem cuttings. DIHAR, the DRDO lab in Leh, raises 15,000–20,000 rooted plants a year.
• Spacing: 4 m × 2 m, in pits of 2 × 2 × 2 feet.
• Manure and fertiliser: 20 kg farmyard manure a plant (the DPR also says 20–40 kg a basin) and 50 kg nitrogen a hectare at planting.
• Weeds: black polythene mulch, or a mulch of Artemisia.
• Pruning: remove 10–25% of the canopy; more than 25% cuts the crop.
• Climate: the plant takes −43 °C to 40 °C (p6; the DPR's p2 misprints the lower figure as 43 °C).

Ladakh's Horticulture Department runs a sea buckthorn nursery and demonstration orchard at the Centre of Excellence in Nimoo, sanctioned by the Government of India for ₹7.89 crore (UT Ladakh; Nimoo visit, April 2025).

Can it grow in the plains? It grows naturally at 2,000–4,300 m. We found no official trial results for the Indian plains, so we do not say it can.

Almost every part is used: the pulp for juice, concentrate and syrup; the oil in the pulp and in the seed; the dried berry; and the leaves for herbal tea. Cosmetics use the oils.

What 100 kg of berries gives (NIFTEM DPR, p8–9):

Seed is separated from the dried cake; seed oil is generally extracted with supercritical CO₂.

Prices. Two kinds of figure exist, and they are not the same thing:

• What Ladakh's farmers are paid for berries: a minimum of ₹300 a kg in 2026, up from ₹150 in 2025, as announced by the Lieutenant Governor on 18 September 2026 (UT Ladakh).
• Product prices quoted in NIFTEM's DPR (the PDF is dated December 2025 but the prices carry no date): pulp ₹110–120 a kg, clean seed ₹250–300 a kg, hull ₹20–30 a kg, dried berry ₹200–300 a kg.

These are not today's market rates. Ladakh's Chief Secretary noted on 8 October 2026 that rates vary among buyers and asked for the procurement system to be examined (UT Ladakh).

For the buyer's side, our sister site lists the sea buckthorn products India supplies, with a dated juice price table. For the factory side, see how a sea buckthorn processing unit is laid out and what NIFTEM's model unit costs.

Sea buckthorn is known for a lot of vitamin C and for oil in its soft pulp, which is unusual in a fruit. The figures vary widely with species, place and ripeness:

• Vitamin C: 52.86 to 896 mg per 100 g of fruit across published studies; 275 mg per 100 g for berries from Ladakh (Wang et al. 2022, Frontiers in Nutrition).
• Fats: the main fatty acids in the berries are palmitic, palmitoleic (an omega-7) and oleic acid (same review).
• NIFTEM's table (per 100 g, citing the Directorate of Arecanut and Spices Development and USDA): moisture 91 g, carbohydrate 5 g, fat 2 g, protein 1 g, crude fibre 0.5 g, vitamin C 909 mg, vitamin A 1,500 µg, vitamin E 3 mg, potassium 420 mg, sodium 6 mg. The DPR's own text on the same page gives different vitamin C and E figures (600 mg and 160 mg), so treat single numbers with care.

IndianAgri makes no health claim for sea buckthorn. Claims on packs and in project reports are the seller's to prove.

The International Seabuckthorn Association's 2020 report, as cited by Wang et al. (2022), counted 2.33 million hectares in 52 countries as of December 2020, about 2.1 million hectares of it in China (Frontiers in Nutrition). NIFTEM's DPR uses an older round figure of about 3.0 million hectares, wild and planted, with about 90% in China, Mongolia, Russia, northern Europe and Canada, and China the largest producer.

So India's 13,000 hectares are well under 1% of the world's area. The country Ladakh is now looking to is Mongolia: Mongolian producers, including the head of the UVS Seabuckthorn Producer Association, spoke at Leh's conclave in September 2026, and Ladakh's Chief Secretary asked officials to study the Mongolian model (UT Ladakh, 19 Sep 2026).

We found no FAO production series for sea buckthorn, so this page gives no world tonnage.

• GI tag. "Ladakh Sea Buckthorn" was registered as a Geographical Indication in Class 31 in November 2023, with the Department of Industries and Commerce, UT Ladakh, as registered proprietor (Voice of Ladakh, 17 Nov 2023). Ladakh's Lieutenant Governor referred to the registration in his 18 September 2026 speech. We could not open the GI Registry's own record.
• ODOP and PM-FME. Sea buckthorn is Leh district's One District One Product, as the Lieutenant Governor noted in September 2026; ODOP products are the focus of the PM-FME scheme of the Ministry of Food Processing Industries. Our sister site explains what a PM-FME sea buckthorn unit costs in NIFTEM's model.
• DIHAR (DRDO), Leh. The Defence Institute of High Altitude Research developed processing technologies for the berry and licensed sea buckthorn products to companies, including Patanjali Ayurved in 2015 (Medical Dialogues, 25 Aug 2015). Dr Tsering Stobdan of DIHAR spoke on the way forward for Ladakh at the 2026 conclave.
• Centre of Excellence for Sea Buckthorn, Nimoo (UT Ladakh Horticulture), inaugurated on 4 December 2025 (release).
• Proposed national centre. The Union Ministry of Agriculture has set up a committee to examine a National Sanjeevani Research Centre for sea buckthorn in Nubra Valley.
• Research and support at the 2026 conclave: CSIR-IHBT (Palampur), NIFTEM, KVK Leh (University of Ladakh), the Indian Institute of Packaging and APEDA, which spoke on exports.
• Co-operatives. Ladakh's Cooperative Department runs a committee on sea buckthorn procurement and aggregation (31 Aug 2026).

Ladakh's own releases name a few local processors and their shipments:

• Halman Apricots, Kargil, sent 4.5 tonnes of dried sea buckthorn to Chandigarh on 1 November 2025, with another six tonnes to follow, and processed about 35 tonnes of pulp that financial year (UT Ladakh).
• Rabbani Agri Processing Unit, Sankoo (Kargil), dispatched its final consignment of 20 tonnes of pulp to Delhi on 12 October 2026, with Well with India Pvt. Ltd. (UT Ladakh).
• A local entrepreneur runs the processing unit at the Nimoo Centre of Excellence and told officials in April 2025 that demand is well above what is collected (UT Ladakh).

The September 2026 conclave brought together 20 buyers and about 120 MSME-registered entrepreneurs and self-help groups. On every account the problem is supply, not demand: picking, aggregation and pulping in the villages.

IndianAgri connects people across the sea buckthorn chain. We do not trade it ourselves.

Collect or grow sea buckthorn in Ladakh, Himachal, Uttarakhand, Sikkim or Arunachal? List your berries, pulp or seed: tell us the product, the quantity you expect this season, your village or town, whether it is certified organic, and how to reach you.

Buying pulp, juice, seed or oil? Send a buying request with the product, quantity and destination, or write to us.

Planning a processing unit? Ask for help with the project report, the machines and the PM-FME application. We help you prepare; the scheme's authorities decide.

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