Panna Stone Price by Origin, and Why Inclusions Are Not Faults

Last updated 14 September 2026. All prices in this article are drawn from our own live catalogue on the date shown, not from a rate card.

Panna is emerald: the green variety of the mineral beryl, coloured by chromium and vanadium. In the Indian trade it is Budh ratna, the gem of Mercury. It is called pachu in Tamil, maragatham in Malayalam and Tamil, panna ratna in the North, and markat in Sanskrit. Almost every panna in the world contains inclusions, and that is simply how the gem forms.

This piece explains what panna is, why the inclusions inside it belong there, and what Colombian, Zambian and Brazilian material actually costs. The figures come from our own live emerald book on preciouscarats.com as on 14 September 2026.

What is Panna stone?

Panna is the Hindi and trade name for emerald, the green variety of beryl. Its colour comes from traces of chromium and vanadium in the crystal. In Vedic astrology it is the gem of Budh, Mercury. Chemically it is beryllium aluminium silicate, refractive index 1.577 to 1.583, specific gravity 2.67 to 2.78, hardness 7.5 to 8 on the Mohs scale.

Not every green beryl is emerald. The Gemological Institute of America is precise about where the line sits: the hue must be bluish green to pure green, and "if the hue is too yellowish or too bluish, the stone is not emerald, but a different variety of beryl, and its value drops accordingly."

A good deal of what happens at the counter follows from that one sentence. A pale, yellowish-green beryl looks similar to an untrained eye, costs a fraction, and is sold as panna every day of the week.

What the gem is called, market by market:

All of these are the same mineral. A dealer who uses one name is not selling something different from a dealer who uses another. A name starts carrying real information only when an origin is attached to it, and that question comes further down.

Why does panna have inclusions?

Emerald forms where beryllium and chromium meet, two elements that almost never occur together in the earth's crust. The geology that brings them together is violent, fluid-rich and interrupted, and the crystal traps whatever surrounds it as it grows. Those trapped features are the inclusions. A panna without them is rare enough that its absence is itself a reason to test the gem.

Ruby and sapphire grow in comparatively quiet conditions and often come out clean. Emerald does not get that chance. Its growth environment is a hydrothermal system: hot fluid moving through fractured rock, carrying dissolved minerals, cooling and re-heating. The crystal grows in fits, and each interruption leaves a record inside the gem, whether a fluid pocket, a gas bubble, a crystal of another mineral, or a healed fracture.

The trade has a word for the result. GIA describes emerald inclusions as typically appearing "mossy or garden-like," and notes these are "sometimes called jardin, which is French for garden." A garden, then, and not a flaw. The word itself tells you how the trade has always regarded them.

Colombian panna jardin macro, unretouched, 20x

Zambian panna jardin macro, unretouched, 20x

Brazilian panna jardin macro, unretouched, 20x

Are inclusions in emerald a defect?

No. In emerald, inclusions are expected, and the trade prices around them. GIA states plainly that "the trade generally accepts eye-visible inclusions in higher-quality emeralds," a standard applied to no other major gem. An eye-visible inclusion that would drop a sapphire two grades is normal in a fine emerald.

For a first-time panna buyer this inverts what they have been told. Most buyers arrive believing that a clean gem is a good gem. For panna, a gem that is clean to the eye and cheap is far more likely to be green glass, a doublet, or dyed beryl than an unusually fine emerald.

The point also matters doctrinally. In the Vedic tradition, the efficacy of a gem is held to follow its quality, and quality is a range, not a gate. A panna with a visible jardin is an ordinary gem, not a disqualified one. The idea that only a flawless gem "works" is a sales device used to move a buyer from a piece they can afford to one they cannot.

Inclusions do affect price, and the effect is graded:

• Position. An inclusion under the table, in the line of sight, costs more than the same inclusion near the girdle.
• Contrast. A dark mica flake is more visible than a colourless fluid feather of the same size, and prices lower.
• Transparency. Inclusions that cloud the gem overall reduce the way light returns from it, and this is what moves price most.
• Durability. A fissure reaching the surface is a setting risk rather than a beauty question, and it is the reason the gem was oiled.

Only the last of those is a fault in any real sense, and it is a fault of condition.

What is oiling in panna, and is an oiled emerald still natural?

Oiling means filling an emerald's surface-reaching fissures with a colourless substance of similar refractive index, so the fissures reflect less light and the gem looks more transparent. An oiled emerald is still a natural emerald. Natural and treated are not opposites. What the treatment changes is the gem's disclosed condition, and that belongs on the report, in writing.

The counter language obscures this. Asli, kudrati, original, natural: none of those words tell a buyer anything about treatment. A heated gem is natural. An oiled gem is natural. A glass-filled gem is natural. The question is what has been done to the gem, and whether anyone wrote it down.

GIA classifies the degree of clarity enhancement on a three-step scale and records it on the report as F1, F2 or F3:

One line in GIA's own procedure gets misrepresented often enough to be worth quoting directly. GIA "uses the classification system only to evaluate the level of treatment, and not to offer an overall clarity grade for the stone." A report that says minor is describing how much work the filler is doing. Anyone presenting it as a clarity grade is reading the paper wrong.

What the filler is matters as much as how much of it there is. Cedarwood oil is the traditional one: colourless, close in refractive index to emerald, and reversible. It also dries out, which is why an oiled panna can look duller after some years, and why re-oiling is ordinary maintenance. Hardened polymer resins, sold under trade names and recorded on better reports as artificial resin, do not dry out the same way, are far harder to remove, and most labs treat them as a materially different disclosure. Green-tinted oil adds colour as well as clarity, which makes it a third thing altogether, and it should always be named on the report.

Measured across every loose panna we had live on 14 September 2026:

Two pieces in a thousand show no indications of treatment. We are not going to describe our emerald inventory as untreated, and neither should anyone else's.

Filled fissure in a panna, unretouched macro

Which panna is best: Colombian, Zambian or Brazilian?

Origin describes where a gem came from. It is not a grade awarded to it. In our own live stock, the average Zambian panna sells for more per carat than the average Colombian one, ₹38,626 against ₹27,761. The market's belief that Colombian is automatically the better gem does not survive contact with a real inventory.

Measured across every loose panna we had live on 14 September 2026:

Brazilian covers the widest ground of the three. Most of what we list from Brazil is affordable everyday material, and a smaller part of it is fine goods that price alongside any other origin, which is why its low and high figures sit so far apart.

Now read the spread rather than the average. Within Colombian material alone, the dearest gem per carat is 11 times the cheapest. Within Zambian, 25 times. Within Brazilian, 63 times. Across all three, 252 times.

A range that wide inside a single origin means the origin is not doing the pricing. Colour, transparency and the position of the jardin are doing the pricing. Origin works as a tiebreaker between two gems that are otherwise close, and it is a strong one at the top of the market, but it will not substitute for looking at the gem.

These are tendencies, with exceptions sitting in our own stock:

• Colombian material comes from the Boyacá belt, principally the Muzo, Chivor and Coscuez areas. It tends to a warmer, slightly yellowish-green with high saturation, and carries characteristic three-phase inclusions: a cavity holding liquid, a gas bubble and a salt crystal together. It commands a premium at the fine end. One point to watch: a report will say Colombia. It will not say Muzo unless the lab has done origin work at that level, and most do not.
• Zambian material comes principally from the Kafubu belt, of which the Kagem mine is the largest source. It tends to a slightly bluer, darker green with good saturation and often better transparency than Colombian of the same price. Mica inclusions are typical. In our own book this is the material that prices highest per carat at the top.
• Brazilian material comes from Minas Gerais and Bahia, including Belmont, Itabira, Nova Era and Santa Terezinha. The quality range is enormous, which is what the 63 times internal spread reflects. The bulk of the world's commercial panna is Brazilian, and so is a good deal of fine material. It is honest, wearable and affordable at one end, and competitive with any origin at the other.

The trade name attached to origin is where the mis-selling starts. "Colombian" on a tag, with no report behind it, is a word. Ask for the report. If the report carries no origin determination, the seller is telling you an opinion, which may well be a sincere one, but it is not a fact you paid for.

A note on our own spelling: some of our older product titles carry "Columbian" rather than "Colombian." That is our error and we are correcting it. It is mentioned here so that a buyer comparing listings knows it is a typo and not a different material.

Panna stone price: what a piece actually costs

Loose panna on our site runs from ₹1,800 to ₹4,21,450 a piece, and from ₹794 to ₹2,00,476 per carat. About half of what we list sits at or under ₹50,000 and about half above it. There is no single "panna rate." A seller who quotes one is quoting for one grade and hoping you assume it covers all of them.

Weight in the Indian trade is spoken in ratti. One ratti is 0.9 carat, so a 5.25 ratti panna is a gem of 4.73 carats or a little more, and a 7 ratti panna is 6.30 carats or a little more. Get that conversion right before you compare two quotes, because a seller quoting in carats and a seller quoting in ratti are not quoting the same gem.

Weight alone will not tell you the price. At any one of those named weights, the dearest panna we list is more than a hundred times the cheapest. Both are natural emeralds, both are certified, and both weigh the same. Everything between them is colour, transparency, and where the jardin sits.

So a per-ratti "rate" is the wrong question to ask. Ask for a quote you can check instead. It has five things in it, and any seller can send all five in a WhatsApp message:

1. Weight in carats and in ratti, so the conversion is on the record rather than in the seller's head.
2. Origin as the report states it, whether Colombia, Zambia or Brazil, and not as the tag states it.
3. Treatment named. Minor oil, moderate oil, resin. Not "standard enhancement."
4. The rate per carat and the total, written separately. A total alone hides the rate; a rate alone hides the weight. Both together are checkable.
5. The lab and the certificate number, with the verification link if the lab publishes one.

If a seller gives you four of the five and goes quiet on the fifth, that fifth one is your answer.

Because treatment is disclosed on every piece we sell, its effect on price is measurable:

Resin-filled Colombian material in our book trades at roughly 44% of the per-carat average of oiled Colombian material. That discount is real, disclosed and measurable, and it exists because the disclosure exists.

The Zambian comparison is less convenient. Minor oil and moderate oil sit barely 1% apart, which does not mean moderate oil costs nothing. In this particular parcel the moderate-oil gems happen to carry better colour, and that offsets the treatment discount. Treatment is one input into price among several, and a table that suggested otherwise would be a marketing table.

For a reference point outside our own book: Gemfields, which operates the Kagem mine in Zambia, held its most recent higher-quality emerald auction from 4 to 21 May 2026, selling 183,385 carats of rough for USD 26.8 million, an average of USD 146.08 per carat. The comparable September 2025 auction averaged USD 160.78 per carat. Across 52 Kagem auctions since July 2009, Gemfields reports USD 1,122 million in cumulative revenue.

Those are rough goods, at source, in bulk lots, bought by cutters, so they are not comparable to a cut and certified gem at retail. What they give you is direction: the wholesale market for good Zambian rough softened by about 9% between September 2025 and May 2026. That is the kind of fact a buyer is entitled to and almost never gets told.

How do I check whether my panna is real?

Ask for the laboratory report before you ask anything else, then read the treatment line on it. A report from an independent lab that names the species, the treatment and, where determined, the origin, does more for you than any home test. Every gem we list carries third-party certification, and where the lab offers online verification, the link sits on the product page.

What the report should tell you, in this order:

1. Species and variety. "Natural emerald." If it says "green beryl," it is not panna.
2. Treatment, named. Minor, moderate or significant oil, resin, or no indications observed. If the report says "industry-accepted treatment" or "standard enhancement," that is a euphemism rather than a disclosure, and it is why we do not use those phrases.
3. Weight, dimensions, cut, so the gem in your hand is the gem on the paper.
4. Origin, if determined. Many reports do not carry it. A report without an origin line is not a bad report; a seller claiming an origin the report does not carry is a bad seller.

Substitutes sold as panna, all of which a report separates in minutes:

• Green glass, sometimes with bubbles introduced deliberately to imitate a jardin. It warms to the touch differently, and its bubbles are round where emerald inclusions are not.
• Doublets and triplets, a thin slice of pale beryl or quartz cemented to a green backing. The joining line shows when the gem is viewed through the side, immersed.
• Dyed beryl or dyed quartz, where colour concentrates in the fractures rather than through the body.
• Green onyx, peridot, tsavorite and green tourmaline, all separable by refractive index in a minute.
• Lab-grown emerald, chemically emerald and grown in a factory, legitimate when sold as such and a fraud when it is not. Reports separate them without difficulty.

One home observation is worth trusting. Hold the gem to a single point of light and look for the garden. A gem with no internal life at a low price is the one to question.

Why does panna dull over time, and how do I care for it?

Because the oil in the fissures dries out. It is a maintenance matter, and re-oiling restores it. Panna is 7.5 to 8 on the Mohs scale, which is hard, but its fissures make it comparatively brittle, and heat is its real enemy.

• Never put panna in an ultrasonic or steam cleaner. The oil comes out and, in some cases, the gem parts along a fissure. This is the commonest way a good panna is ruined, and it usually happens at a jeweller's counter during a routine polish.
• Clean with lukewarm water and a soft cloth. No detergent, no solvent, no ammonia.
• Take it off before the sunar works on the mounting. Heat at the bench does to an oiled panna exactly what you would expect.
• Store it separately. At 7.5 to 8 it is softer than sapphire and will pick up scratches from a ruby or a diamond sharing a box.
• Expect to re-oil once in some years. A competent lab or dealer can do it. It is normal, it is disclosed, and it is not a repair of a fault.

What we will and will not tell you about a panna

We sell gems. We do not prescribe them. If an astrologer has told you to wear panna, that reading is theirs, and we will not second-guess it, add to it, or use it to move you to a costlier piece. Our work begins after that conversation and it is narrow: to make sure that what you are shown is what you receive, and that you understand what you are paying for.

In practice:

• Every listing carries independent certification or a clear gemmological disclosure, with a verification link where the lab provides one.
• Treatment is named on every piece. We do not write "industry-accepted procedure."
• Photography is unretouched, and the piece dispatched is the piece photographed.
• Inclusions are described as what they are. We will not sell you the idea that a jardin is a flaw, and we will not sell you a flawless gem you do not need.
• Ten-day returns on eligible loose gems.

Vedic tradition holds panna as the gem of Budh. We will describe that tradition, and we will not promise you an outcome from it.

Jo dikhta hai, wohi milega.

Frequently asked questions

Is panna the same as emerald?

Yes. Panna is the Hindi and Indian trade name for emerald, the green variety of beryl. Pachu, maragatham, markat and Budh ratna all refer to the same mineral.

Are inclusions in panna a defect?

No. Emerald forms in conditions that make inclusions almost inevitable, and the trade accepts eye-visible inclusions in high-quality emeralds, a standard applied to no other major gem. Inclusions affect price through their position, contrast and effect on transparency, but their presence is normal.

What is jardin in an emerald?

Jardin is French for garden, and it is the trade word for the mossy, garden-like network of inclusions typical of emerald. GIA uses the term in describing emerald clarity.

What is the price of panna per carat in India?

On our live catalogue as on 14 September 2026, loose panna runs from ₹794 to ₹2,00,476 per carat. Colombian material averages ₹27,761 per carat, Zambian ₹38,626 and Brazilian ₹5,158.

How many carats is 5.25 ratti panna?

One ratti is 0.9 carat, so 5.25 ratti is 4.73 carats or a little above. Price at that weight is not a single figure: at any given ratti weight the dearest panna can be more than a hundred times the cheapest, because colour, transparency and the jardin decide the number, not the weight.

Is Colombian panna better than Zambian?

Not automatically. In our own live stock the average Zambian panna prices higher per carat than the average Colombian one, ₹38,626 against ₹27,761. Colombian material commands a premium at the fine end, but the price range within each origin is many times wider than the gap between origins, so the individual gem decides, not the country.

Is oiled panna still natural?

Yes. Oiling fills surface-reaching fissures to improve apparent transparency; it does not make the gem synthetic. What matters is that the treatment is named on the report. Natural and treated are not opposites, and words like asli, kudrati and original disclose nothing about treatment.

What do F1, F2 and F3 mean on an emerald report?

They are GIA's codes for the degree of clarity enhancement: F1 minor, F2 moderate, F3 significant. GIA uses this classification only to record the level of treatment, not to give the gem an overall clarity grade.

Why has my panna lost its colour?

Most likely the oil in its fissures has dried out, which happens naturally over years and faster after ultrasonic or steam cleaning. Re-oiling by a competent lab or dealer restores the appearance. It is maintenance, not damage.

Can panna be cleaned in an ultrasonic cleaner?

No. Ultrasonic and steam cleaning strip the oil and can open a fissure. Use lukewarm water and a soft cloth only.

What is panna called in Tamil and Malayalam?

Pachu and maragatham in Tamil; maragatham in Malayalam. In Telugu, marakatham. All refer to emerald.

Which certificate should a panna carry?

An independent third-party report that names the species, the treatment and the weight, and ideally offers online verification. The lab's name matters less than whether the treatment line is specific. A report saying "standard enhancement" tells you nothing.

Sources

• GIA, Emerald Quality Factors, for the colour definition, jardin, trade acceptance of eye-visible inclusions, and the scope of the treatment classification. https://www.gia.edu/emerald-quality-factor
• GIA, On a laboratory report for a treated emerald, what does F1, F2 and F3 mean?, for the minor, moderate and significant definitions. https://www.gia.edu/gia-faq-analysis-grading-treated-emerald-f1-f2-f3
• Gemfields Group, Auction Results, Higher-quality emeralds, May 2026: USD 26.8 million, 183,385 carats, USD 146.08 per carat average, 4 to 21 May 2026. https://www.sharenet.co.za/v3/sens_display.php?tdate=20260522080000&seq=18
• Gemfields Group, Auction Results, Higher-quality emeralds, September 2025: USD 32.0 million, USD 160.78 per carat average; 52 Kagem auctions since July 2009 totalling USD 1,122 million. https://www.gemfieldsgroup.com/auction-results-higher-quality-emeralds-12-9-25/
• Precious Carats live catalogue, as on 14 September 2026. All per-carat, per-origin and per-treatment figures in this article are measured from our own listed stock on that date.