With the soil still soggy from the season’s heavy rains, Mohammed Ashraf trod carefully through his apple orchard in Pulwama, in India-controlled Jammu and Kashmir. He stopped by each tree, not to pick fruit but to examine how many had fallen since his last inspection and lay decaying on the ground.

Extreme rainfall in August here caused widespread flooding and a landslide that left debris blocking 300 meters, or about a fifth of a mile, of a highway that connects the region to the rest of the country, shutting Mr. Ashraf off from his customers. So far, he has lost 80 percent of his crop.

The authorities shut the highway for almost two weeks in late August, and restricted heavy trucks from using the road through Sept. 17, to make repairs. That left harvested apples, packed in boxes and loaded onto trucks, stranded. They began to rot, and the crop still in the region’s orchards went unpicked.

Kashmir, which is disputed by Pakistan and India, supplies more than 70 percent of India’s apples — more than two million tons — that are taken by road to the markets. Kullu Delicious and Red Delicious, which are the most commonly grown varieties, are harvested in September. Apples contribute about 10 percent to the region’s economy, with seven million people in the region depending on the trade for their livelihood.

But apples are perishable and — without refrigerated trucks — must reach their destination in two to three days, growers say, or they go bad. The cost of apples lost this season has reached more than $226 million and is still climbing, said Bashir Ahmad Bashir, chairman of Kashmir Valley Fruit Growers and Dealers Union.