HARGILL, TX (TIP): Growing up in the 1970s in Amayannor, a small village in Kerala’s Kottayam district in southern India, Mani Skaria aspired to be a civil servant, like many bright students of his generation. However, a teaching job in the Kingdom of Jordan after his master’s degree in botany set him on a serendipitous journey that ultimately established him as a revolutionary figure in Texas’s citrus industry.
Today, Skaria oversees a citrus orchard spanning hundreds of acres in Hargill, Texas, spearheading changes in the Lone Star State’s citrus industry through innovative crop production and protection. U.S. Citrus Company, which he founded in Hargill more than a decade ago, runs the largest operation of specialty citrus crops in Texas.
His production practices are based on organic principles, respecting mother nature and honoring the next generation of fruit growers.
Hargill is located in the southernmost region of Texas in the Rio Grande Valley, roughly 35 miles north of the U.S.-Mexican border, separated by the Rio Grande River. The region is known for its fertile agricultural land, including citrus orchards, vegetable farms, and sugarcane fields.
Skaria introduced pioneering micro-budding technology, which accelerates fruit production and increases fruit yield per acre, resulting in record-breaking yields in less than half the conventional time. “My innovations and technologies produce citrus fruit quickly and with a higher yield,” he says.
Skaria is also credited with establishing the clean citrus program in Texas. His decades-long career is marked by high-impact contributions, such as his 2010 discovery of Sweet Orange Scab (SOS), the first in the nation, and the discovery of the Diaprepes root weevil in 2000, which had a $15 billion impact on Texas agriculture as per the Texas Department of Agriculture.
The US Citrus Company
Skaria started the US Citrus Company in 2012, a year before he retired from Texas A&M University-Kingsville. It took several years to build the infrastructure on about 550 acres of land the company purchased in Hargill.
He built the citrus enterprise through innovations in tree production, planting density, and soil and water conservation.
One of his pioneering innovations was the micro-budding technology for higher-density planting, inspired by a conversation with Fucik about increasing profitability in citrus orchards.
The technology helped US Citrus become the nation’s largest domestic producer of limes and Skaria earn the moniker “Lime King of Texas.”