Prices of cardamom, Queen of Spices, soar as wild weather wipes Indian production

Every year, tens of millions of Hindus flock to the Venkateswara Temple in Andhra Pradesh to pay tribute to site's patron deity and pick up some of its famous sweets, the legendary "Tirupati laddu".

The traditional delicacy is baked with sugar, flour, ghee, nuts and raisins and studded with cardamom, which has surged in price this year as India's erratic weather ravages production of the pod, known as "the Queen of Spices".

That spike has created new cost and supply pressures for buyers of the spice like the temple, which offers a limited number of complementary laddus to visitors and charges for extras.

"We are already incurring a loss making laddus, and this makes it worse," a senior temple official told Reuters.

The temple typically buys 120 tonnes a year of high quality small cardamom pods, the most sought after kind, to meet demand. A year ago, it paid 1,600 rupees ($23.31) per kg for the spice, the official said. This month, it paid 4,400 rupees per kg.

The production problems stem from erratic weather in the district of Idukki, which accounts for at least a sixth of the global production and about three-quarters of India's small cardamom output.

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