One-Day Seminar on Dragon Fruits

There was a seminar on dragon fruit which was attended by 170 participants. There were two guest speakers from Vietnam namely; Ms Phong and Dr Hoa.

Comparing dragon fruit production in Vietnam which is about 10,000 hectares with Malaysia with 1,000 hectares. This means that Malaysia has one-tenth of what Vietnam has.However, Malaysia has many years to go before it can overtake Vietnam; of course through R&D , and collaboration with various parties concern. My hypothesis is that oil palm and rubber which was once brought by the British colonial was not a Malaysian crop before, but they were from Africa and Brazil, respectively. Through research and continuous hard work, Malaysia has achieved to be the world producer - similarly that goes with dragon fruit. I believe with the technology that we own; we could meet our target and plans supported by our progressive farmers , entrepreneurs as well as 'big brothers' to venture and various parties concerned.

For what I forsee should Malaysia become the world player in this game, she has to come with its own disease free planting materials-back to basic. Educate the farmers on crop husbandry, sanitaion as well as post harvest handling. There are many farmers who had 'burnt their fingers' I must say. But if the transter of technology(TOT) is at par ; then I am pretty sure this goal can be achieved.

Back to Vietnam, they had succesfully achieved EUREGAP markets and still working on GLOBALGAP. There are more things need to be learnt and I am confident that we can make short cuts here and there before we can stand 'shoulder to shoulder' with them.