Thursday, July 10, 2008

Good Dragon Fruits Farms

Yesterday I visited two farms nearby which are considered good. The most important in keeping good farm is

1) Fertilization
2) Pruning
3) Management.

These are the three basic things to ensure the sustenance of the farm. Both farms I visited are organic farms meaning that they applied organic fertilizers. Here are some pics to look at.

Those interested to order the organic fertilizer can email me at zainudinhaji@gmail.com or call my handphone 012 3535 411 (see below). Detail testimony will be provided,












I have just planted the yellow type. I have more than 2,000 cuttings.






Organic ferilizer derived from fish (New Zealand product)

Saturday, July 5, 2008

MAHA 2008

Well the Malaysian Agriculture, Horticulture and Agro-Tourism (M.A.H.A. ) 2008 is very soon that will be held 11-23 August 2008. I have been assigned to become a judge in the fruit category. This means that I have to go to see all participated farms around the country in order to propose which are the best farms. The farms included guava, citrus, dragon fruits, salak, starfruits, mango etc. It is hefty alot of work organised by the Department of Agriculture as the secretariat.


I chose to go Sabah this time where I went to see citrus in Tawau, salak and dragon fruits in Sandakan and guava in Tenom.
View from Crocker Range

Most of the farms were very coordinated and managed well.

Coconut milk is sold everywhere in Sabah

Beautiful weed/legume I found

Dragon fruits flowering prosufely

Packaging of dragon fruits in boxes


Dragon fruits flowering



Dragon fruit plantation in Beluran area


Dragon fruits with heavy flowering


Salak plant and fruits in Sandakan area (below)



I enjoyed my trip from Tawau to Sandakan then go to Kota Kinabalu and later to Tenom by road.

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Lighting for Dragon Fruits

Lighting installed in dragon fruit farm


I came across innovative farmers somewhere in Johore who manage to induce floweeing in dragon fruits using lights. Of course there are costs incurred however the yield produced could offsets the initial investments. As we know that that dragon fruits is a long day plant where more sunshine is needed especially to trigger flowering.


Flower buds emerged from terminal shoots

Here are some pics that can shared with hobbyists, planters and farmers alike so that they have some idea of what I am talking about.

There are more things to find out in particular;
a) what is the voltage and how long is used?
b) when and how should be it installed ?
c) the distant and height from each tree?

These are some questions that I posed during my visits to the farm. Should anyone interest to know more pls let me know.

Sunday, June 8, 2008

More on dragon fruits

Everything goes up...fuel, fertilizers, rice etc. How can we save costs on planting? It is a big challenge that we face in this quarter of century

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

More dragon fruit diseases-poster






There was a poster at the National Fruit Conference 2007 in Johere Bahru, Malaysia. It covers fungal and bacterial diseases. Why this happens and how to solve it.
Above in a poster regarding to dragon fruit diseases.

Should any one interested please email me or call me.

Friday, February 1, 2008

Disease -Free Dragon Fruit Planting Materials

The dragon fruit is usually propagated by seeds or cuttings. Although several studies have examined these general propagation methods of dragon fruit, no widely available information currently exist as to the protocols for production of high quality planting material of Selenicereus megalanthus via tissue culture system. Even in the absence of an efficient protocol, there remains the need to quantify the impact of micropropagated material of yellow dragon fruits in the field.

Plant tissue culture is an alternative method of propagation for large scale production of plants. Several researchers have developed a protocol for micropropagation of yellow pitaya. However, these reports lack the comprehensive key information on the large production of using tissue culture technology for the clonal propagation of yellow dragon fruit planting material.