Early ripen lychee enjoys high price and good consumption

It has come to the harvest season for the early ripen lychee in the key cultivation areas in the districts of Tan Yen, Luc Ngan, Luc Nam, Lang Giang…in the northern province of Bac Giang for nearly one week. The fruits enjoy good consumption and high selling price, particularly VietGAP lychee are sold at minimum prize of 35,000 VND (1.5 USD) per kilogram.

Family of Nguyen Van Tue in Phuc Dinh village, Phuc Hoa commune (Tan Yen district) harvests the VietGAP lychee.

Higher selling price

Recently, all the main roads in Phuc Hoa commune (Tan Yen district) have been crowded by numerous trucks and carriages transporting the lychee from the dawn to the twilight.

With an orchard of over 1.5 mau (nearly 0.6 hectare), family of Nguyen Van Tue in Phuc Dich village, Phuc Hoa commune has hired 3 – 5 labors to harvest the lychee for several days. 

Tue strictly followed VietGAP procedure and focused on the tree development to timely pruning the branches and spray the allowable plant protection product to prevent the diseases, hence his lychee orchard is laden with fruits.

This crop he estimated to harvest 5.5 tonnes of fruits. Because the lychees have good looking and quality without any stem end borers, the small traders directly came to his orchard to buy the fruits with the price of 35 – 37,000 VND per kilogram. Excluding the production cost, Tue would benefit about 200 million VND (over 8,500 USD).

According to Nguyen Thai Lai, Vice Chairman of the People’s Committee in Tan Yen district, this year the district has 1,300 hectares of early ripen lychee yielding some 15,000 tonnes of fruit. The areas are mostly located in Phuc Hoa commune with nearly 600 hectares including 300 hectares of lychee cultivated under VietGAP procedure.

To ease the lychee consumption, the district authority has arranged the expenses to hold the trade promotion conference and survey to expand the markets among others.

Currently, Phuc Hoa commune has setup about 30 weighting points of early ripen lychee. The majority of the fruits have been introduced to the Southern markets while a small quantity was exported to Lao and Cambodia.

Similarly, the farmers in the districts of Lang Giang, Luc Nam, Luc Ngan and Yen The are busy harvesting the early matured lychees which are sold at 17 – 25,000 VND per kilogram in some weighting points in Voi town (Lang Giang district) and Doi Ngo town (Luc Nam district).

Meanwhile, the farmers grew a part of lychee areas under VietGAP procedure that enjoy average price of 30 – 40,000 VND per kilogram.

Further improving the quality

The Vice Head of Divion of Plant Production and Protection (Department of Agriculture and Rural Development) Tran Van Tu informed that Bac Giang has developed nearly 6,000 hectares of early ripen lychees including about 500 hectares cultivating under VietGAP procedure with a total output of 40,000 tonnes (the same as last year figure).

It come to the harvest season that is expected to last till the middle of June. The fruit quality is higher because many farmers applied the bio-safe cultivation methods, helping enhance the trademark of Bac Giang lychee.

After receiving the provincial Hydro Meteorological Centre's information about the abnormal weather condition with serious hot periods and storms, the competent officers and staff visited the communes, villages and hamlets to seize the status of lychee harvest and timely instruct the farmers to care for the orchards.

Besides, the local authority and competent agencies have organized the lychee trade promotion conference, provided the support in package, label and stamp for origin traceability.

The localities also create favourable conditions for the tradesmen such as arranging the car parking locations, weighting points; mobilizing the armed force, militiamen and youths to ensure the traffic safety and public order.

Particularly, Luc Ngan district upgraded the roads to facilitate the business persons to set up the weighting point in the hamlets and villages.