Let’s cut straight to it: India isn’t selling “spices” to the world it’s running 17 completely different businesses under one export category. Pepper behaves nothing like cumin. Cardamom behaves nothing like mint oil. And if you’re an exporter, a buyer, or just someone trying to figure out where this ₹39,000 crore industry is actually headed, you have to look at it spice by spice, not as one big number.
That’s exactly what this article does. We’re going to walk through five years of hard export data, item by item, and see which spices are compounding buyer demand year after year, which ones are cooling off, and what that actually means if you’re sitting across the table from a US importer or a Gujarat exporter right now
The Five-Year Scoreboard
The numbers in this article are drawn from the Spices Board of India’s official item-wise export data, compiled from DGCI&S and customs returns so this isn’t market speculation, it’s the government’s own trade record.
Between FY 2021–22 and FY 2025–26, India’s total spice exports grew from 1,530,661 tons worth $4,068.47 million to 1,734,562 tons worth $4,430.90 million. That’s roughly 13% growth in volume and 9% growth in dollar value over five years steady, not explosive. But that headline number hides some dramatic swings underneath it.
Some categories nearly doubled in value. Others quietly shrank by a third. And a few show a pattern every exporter should pay attention to: volume falling while value keeps climbing a sign that buyers are paying more per kilogram for better quality, not just ordering more tonnage.
Cardamom: The Standout Performer
Small cardamom is the single biggest growth story in this data. Export value jumped from $184.57 million in FY 2021–22 to $413.24 million in FY 2025–26 more than doubling while volume grew from 10,571 tons to 15,050 tons. Large cardamom followed the same pattern, climbing from $20.73 million to $35.52 million.
This isn’t a one-year spike either; the growth has been consistent year over year. Demand is being pulled hard by Middle Eastern buyers, who use cardamom as a core ingredient in traditional Gulf coffee and tea culture, combined with genuinely tight global supply. If there’s one spice category that’s currently in a seller’s market, it’s this one.
Turmeric: Health Demand Is Rewriting the Category
Turmeric export value climbed from $205.87 million to $327.2 million over the five years a 59% jump while volume grew more modestly, from 152,758 tons to 175,896 tons. That gap between volume growth and value growth tells you exactly what’s happening: buyers aren’t just buying more turmeric, they’re paying more per ton for it.
The reason is curcumin. Global nutraceutical and dietary-supplement demand has turned turmeric from “a cooking spice” into “a functional ingredient,” and that’s pulling premiums for high-curcumin, double-polished, and organic-certified lines. If you’re sourcing or exporting in this category, grade and finish now matter more than raw tonnage a distinction covered in more depth for buyers evaluating Indian turmeric finger exporters.
Cumin: Same Story, India’s Signature Spice
Cumin shows the exact same volume-versus-value pattern as turmeric, just at a bigger scale. Export volume actually fell from 216,971 tons in FY 2021–22 to 196,800 tons in FY 2025–26 — but value rose from $448.60 million to $524.22 million over the same period, even after peaking near $732 million in FY 2024–25.
India controls roughly 87% of the world’s cumin supply, and pricing is set daily out of the Unjha APMC in Gujarat. That near-monopoly position is exactly why cumin can absorb volume swings without losing overall trade value buyers simply don’t have many alternative origins to turn to. The purity and flavor characteristics driving this loyalty are explored further in why global buyers prefer Indian cumin for its flavor and purity.
Chilli: The Volume Backbone
Dry red chilli remains the largest single category in India’s spice export basket by a wide margin 683,681 tons worth $1,176.98 million in FY 2025–26, up from 557,144 tons worth $1,151.75 million five years earlier. Volume grew about 23%, while value grew a more modest 2%, meaning this category is still largely a volume game rather than a premium-pricing one.
That makes sense given chilli’s buyer base: China and Vietnam import in bulk for oleoresin extraction and reprocessing, prioritizing price and delivery speed over story or certification. Western buyers do pay more for color-consistent, high-ASTA varieties, but they’re a smaller slice of this particular pie compared to bulk Asian demand.
Garlic and Curry Powder: The Quiet Doublers
Two categories nearly doubled in value with far less attention than cardamom or turmeric get. Garlic exports rose from $24.92 million to $59.87 million, while volume nearly doubled from 22,135 tons to 43,240 tons. Curry powder and spice pastes followed an almost identical arc, growing from $155.41 million to $259.98 million as volume climbed from 52,479 tons to 104,765 tons.
Curry powder’s growth lines up with a global trend that’s easy to underestimate: the explosion of ready-to-cook, ethnic convenience food in Western retail. Every time a supermarket in the UK or US adds a new “authentic Indian” ready meal to its shelf, that’s a small pull on this export line. It’s a category worth watching closely over the next few years.
Ginger and Coriander: Steady, Unspectacular Growth
Ginger and coriander don’t grab headlines, but they’ve quietly delivered some of the most consistent growth in the entire basket. Ginger export value rose from $112.23 million to $142.99 million over five years, with volume holding roughly flat around 146,000–147,000 tons meaning almost all of that gain came from better pricing rather than higher shipments.
Coriander followed a similar path, climbing from $64.73 million to $77.04 million as volume grew from 48,656 tons to 60,211 tons. Both categories benefit from being genuine kitchen staples with broad, diversified buyer bases across Asia, the Middle East, and Europe demand here isn’t driven by one dramatic trend, it’s just steady, everyday consumption growing slowly year after year. That kind of demand is less exciting to talk about, but it’s often the easiest to plan a stable export business around.
Where Demand Is Cooling: Mint, Spice Oils, and Fennel
Not everything is trending upward, and it’s worth being honest about that. Mint products menthol crystals and essential mint oils fell from $595.89 million in FY 2021–22 to $354.67 million in FY 2025–26, a drop of over 40%. Spice oils and oleoresins also slipped, from a peak near $600 million down to $528.73 million.
Fennel tells an even sharper short-term story: export value actually peaked at $90.93 million in FY 2024–25 before falling to $47.81 million the very next year, alongside a steep volume drop from 76,586 tons to 33,038 tons. Celery shows a similar, smaller decline. These swings are usually driven by crop-year yield variation and shifting industrial buyer demand rather than any structural loss of competitiveness, but they’re a reminder that not every spice category moves in the same direction at the same time.
Clove: A Different Kind of Demand Story
Clove doesn’t show up as a major export line in the official item-wise data, and there’s a simple reason for that: India barely grows any clove domestically. India is actually the world’s second-largest clove consumer, importing nearly all of the roughly 31,000 tons it uses each year from Madagascar, Indonesia, and Comoros.
What makes clove interesting for exporters isn’t growing it it’s the cleaning, grading, and re-export value chain sitting on top of those imports, along with the pharmaceutical and Ayurvedic demand for clove oil (eugenol). Buyers sourcing from India in this category care almost entirely about oil content and processing quality, which is exactly what’s covered in Indian clove export demand and high oil content cloves for export.’
Nutmeg: Small Category, Steady Climb
Nutmeg and mace are a small line item in the overall basket, but the trend is quietly positive value rose from $29.25 million to $30.72 million, with volume climbing from 3,597 tons to 4,608 tons over the five years. Karnataka and Kerala remain the dominant sourcing states, and demand tends to spike seasonally around the post-monsoon harvesting and drying window, a pattern explained further in why Indian nutmeg is in high demand after monsoon season. Getting storage right during that window is just as important as the harvest itself, which is why proper nutmeg storage during the rainy season matters so much to exporters trying to protect quality before shipment.
Who’s Actually Buying: The Regional Split
It’s worth remembering that “global demand” isn’t one buyer it’s at least two very different ones. High-volume markets like China and ASEAN countries prioritize price, delivery speed, and bulk throughput, typically running on tighter 10-12% margins for the exporter. High-margin markets like the US, EU, and UK pay considerably more often 20-25% margins but only to exporters who can prove compliance with strict pesticide residue limits, ethylene oxide restrictions, and traceability requirements.
This split explains a lot of the patterns above. Chilli and bulk cumin lean heavily on the first group, which is why their volumes matter more than their per-kilogram premiums. Cardamom, high-curcumin turmeric, and certified organic lines lean on the second group, which is exactly why their value is climbing faster than their tonnage. Knowing which side of this line your product sits on is arguably more useful than any single export statistic.
What Ties All of This Together
If you look across every single category in this data, one pattern repeats: the spices gaining the most value cardamom, turmeric, garlic, curry powder are exactly the ones where buyers are paying for quality, processing, and certification, not just raw tonnage. The spices losing value mint, spice oils, fennel are the ones more exposed to raw commodity price swings and crop-year variability.
That’s not a coincidence. It reflects a broader shift happening across nearly every export category: quality control at the farm level now decides who wins the premium buyer and who’s left competing purely on price. Exporters investing early in integrated pest management and cleaner sourcing practices are the ones best positioned to move up into the higher-margin end of each category a shift explored in how IPM farming is reshaping India’s global spice supply chain.
This shift is also being pushed from the top down. The Government of India has flagged the spice sector as a priority growth area, with an official export target of $10 billion by 2030 backed by dedicated processing and quality-upgradation schemes, as outlined in the Press Information Bureau’s coverage of India’s spice economy.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which spice does India export the most in value terms?
hich Indian spice category is growing the fastest right now?
Why did some spice export volumes fall while their export values rose?
Is India's spice export growth slowing down overall?
What do global buyers look for when sourcing Indian spices in 2026?
Beyond price, buyers increasingly expect verified purity, pesticide and residue compliance, and traceability especially in the US, EU, and UK, where regulatory scrutiny on spice imports has tightened considerably in the past two years.
