Samastipur/New Delhi, June 26 -- Bathua, a village in Bihar's Samastipur district, is named after an age-old local mango variety. The hamlet is an oasis of calm with 700 acres of sprawling orchards, home to century-old trees and memories of a time when being an orchard owner was a measure of one's economic and social status.

But the Bathua mango is on the brink of extinction, and the pride of being an orchard owner is fading away, replaced by a sense of loss and foreboding. Orchard owner Pramod Sharma, 54, who now runs a petty construction business, speaks of the mango like a lost childhood friend. Nowadays, he laments, most owners sell their orchards before the onset of flowering. In these parts, mango trees flower in January and the ha...