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.

Latest Research Paper in World Food Net

Our paper was selected to be in world-food. net in the latest edition Journal of Food Agriculture and Environment Vol.6 entitles "Growth , yield and fruit quality of red dragon fruit (Hylocereus polyrhizus) fruit as affected by plant support system and intercropping with long bean (Vigna sinensis). by WFL Publisher. Abstract can be read here.

(Those who are interested and wish to have a full paper please let me know.)

Visit To Dragon Fruit Farm-40 acre

I have taken a video shot from one of the farms that I visited recently. This 10 -ac farm consisted of one-year plants that is well drained. The total acreage of this farm is 40 acres. The plants are about 1-5 years old. The management is good and they fertilize with organic manure.They planted with red and white varieties. The demand is very good and the supply could not meet the targets.
Another thing I would to stress is that drainage is very important if the land is very flat.In case of heavy rain or shower the water should be drained away quickly. Otherwise, this may cause damage to the rooting system.

Yellow Dragon Fruits

The most popular dragon fruits varieties are red and white. However, of late other varieties are in demand. I manage to propagate yellow dragon variety- about 2000 cuttings . Only the skin is yellow, the flesh is white and very sweet. Except the seeds are a little bit bigger than the two varieties. The plant is slender and the thorns are a bit smaller.

The above pic shows the shape of yellow dragon fruits and how the dragon fruit cuttings are rooted in small polybags. They are nutured , watered and looked after.

After MAHA 2008

It was an exciting moment for farmers through out Malaysia. MAHA is the platform where everyone could see agricultural activities carried out by private sectors, farmers , government agencies, universities etc. Oversea and international participants include Australia, UK, India, China, Indonesia, Denmark and others .
The acceptance from the public was overwhelming. More than 1 Million people turned up for the 13-day exhibition.
I manage to put two posters one on" Disease control dragon fruits in farmer's farm, the other poster on Heliconia growing as landscape plants. My poster is in Malay (Bahasa Melayu)

Dragon Fruits Made Good Entry For MAHA 2008

I have become one of the panel judges for Fruit Section for the last five years. Fruits that enter the contest includes durian,nangka,citrus, pineapple, salak, pulasan, bananas, mangos, guava,wax apple, dragon fruits.They came from all over the states except Sarawak. Sarawak has never enter the fruits contest for so long. The fruits that came to the contest is from the various farms that was selected previously. All those farms are registered through Department Of Agriculture (DOA). There are 2 categories of assesement Farm leve (70%) Products (30%).

Dragon fruits seems this time had the largest entry i.e 8. I was suprised that there are different types of red dragon fruits judging from the scales of the fruits. There are variety which have less scales or bracts compared to the normal red ones. The second largest entry is pineapple and citrus i.e 5 followed by mangos 4 entry.

Those who win will received reward from the Prime Minister on the 12 th of August; appreciation and recognition for their hard work.