“The Groves of Eternal Youth”
Lawrence Osborne's seven-page account of the work in Ladakh, published in the January 2012 issue of Town & Country, USA — then India's only exporter of sea buckthorn to the United States.
Profile
The pioneer of sea buckthorn in India
Chairman and Managing Director of Biosash Business Pvt. Ltd., member of the Seabuckthorn Association of India, and a herbalist of more than thirty years.
Arjun Khanna is Chairman and Managing Director of Biosash Business Pvt. Ltd., a member of the Seabuckthorn Association of India, and a herbalist with more than thirty years in the exploration of herbs and the development of natural products.
In 2005 he established the first processing plant for sea buckthorn in Leh, Ladakh. It still operates today. From it he built what is now India's largest manufacturer of sea buckthorn products, and with it an industry that had not previously existed in the country — one that pays Himalayan families for a harvest that had until then gone largely unused.
The company manufactures entirely in-house and has held organic certification from One Cert International since 2017, alongside certification from the Government of Jammu & Kashmir. He is the second person in the world to have filed for a process innovation patent on the manufacture of sea buckthorn juices — the first being a company in China — developed through his own research. More than fifty of the products made under his direction were the first of their kind anywhere.
Across India he is known simply as the Sea Buckthorn Guru.
Of Note
Blessing
“A wonderful cause”
In the early years of the Leh operation he sought an audience with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, showed him the products and explained the income the harvest was bringing to local families, and received his blessing for the effort.
India's sole representative
Special invitee to the 8th International Seabuckthorn Conference in China in 2018, attending as the only representative from India.
The ISA annual report
Author of the chapter on the popularisation of sea buckthorn health products in India, published in English and Chinese in the International Seabuckthorn Association's Annual Report of International Seabuckthorn Development, 2023.