Vietnam’s fruit producers need to join forces and implement Good Agricultural Practices in order to improve domestic fruit quality and boost sales at home and abroad, a horticulture expert has told Vietnam News.

Dr Nguyen Minh Chau, rector of the Southern Fruit Research Institute, said the country’s agriculture sector is being held back by small-scale farming, which leads to high production costs, low quality and yields.

As a result, Vietnamese fruits are losing domestic market share to imported fruits, and failing to meet export standards abroad.

To develop fruit production, each locality in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta region should identify its speciality, earmark an area of at least 3,000ha for cultivating that fruit, and use intensive farming techniques, he told Vietnam News.

Fruit producers need to co-operate by joining or setting up co-operatives to achieve large-scale, safe, and high-quality fruit production. This will also enable better control of seedlings so that trees suffer less from disease and improvement in productivity and quality, he is quoted as saying.

The adoption of advanced technologies and GAP standards in production, processing and preservation is easier on large farms, he added. Joining forces will also help revamp the distribution system so that farmers are not forced to make panic sales when there is a bumper crop, he said.

Vietnamese fruit has failed to meet food safety regulations adopted in many countries in recent years, Dr Chau said. This is despite the fact some fruit varieties have received GAP certification – like Lo Ren Vinh Kim star apple, Hoa Loc sweet mango, and dragon fruit.

Overuse of pesticides by a number of Vietnamese farmers means fruit has high residue levels. And because of small-scale fruit cultivation, exporters are unable to execute large orders or consistently maintain quality, Vietnam News said.

The delta has 280,000ha under fruit cultivation, with an average annual yield of 2.5-2.7m tonnes, or 70 per cent of the country’s output. This includes nationally popular fruits like Hoa Loc mangoes, longans, rambutans, Cai Mon durians, thick-skinned oranges, and Nam Roi pomelo, Vietnam News said.

According the site, the chairman of the Viet Nam Fruit Association, Vo Mai, said delta-grown fruits were mostly consumed domestically. Only a small volume is exported to China. And even in the domestic market, the share of local fruits has fallen after the arrival of cheap imported fruits from Thailand and China.

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