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.

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)

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.

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.

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