Hariman Sharma

Apples are supposed to need cold winters. Hariman Sharma’s apple doesn’t. In 2025 he was named for the Padma Shri, from Himachal Pradesh ^[1].

A seed in the backyard

Sharma was born on 4 April 1956 in Paniyala, a village in Bilaspur district, and had to leave school after class ten because his family was poor ^[2]. He took up farming and later horticulture, growing mango, litchi and guava, but frost often damaged his mango trees ^[2].

He used to throw the seeds of apples he had eaten into his backyard. Years later he noticed one had grown, and in 2001 the tree bore fruit, at a village only about 1,800 feet above sea level, far too warm for ordinary apples ^[2].

HRMN-99

He grafted branches of this tree onto a plum tree, and later onto crab-apple seedlings brought from Shimla, and built a small orchard ^[2]. The variety, named HRMN-99, does not need cold to flower and fruit, and grows where summer temperatures reach 40 to 50°C ^[2].

From 2014, the National Innovation Foundation sent saplings across India for trials. Fruit has been reported in almost every state, and in Nepal, Bangladesh, Germany and Oman ^[2]. The variety is registered as a farmers’ variety under India’s plant variety protection law ^[2].

His honours include the National Innovation Foundation’s grassroots innovator award (2017) and ICAR’s Jagjivan Ram Krishi Abhinav Puraskar (2020) ^[2].