Replanting citrus trees in Hoa Binh for the 2021-2025 period

Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Le Quoc Doanh suggested many ideas to develop areas specializing in citrus trees cultivation during his business trip to Hoa Binh province.

Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Le Quoc Doanh visits 3T Agricultural Cooperative growing Cao Phong oranges. Photo: Bao Thang.

On 5 November, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Le Quoc Doanh surveyed the situation of citrus fruit production in Hoa Binh province.

Deputy Minister Le Quoc Doanh said that this is the right time for the locality to replant orange and pomelo varieties in the area. "The first is re-cultivation, the second is soil restoration, and the third is sustainable intensification. Those are the three issues that Hoa Binh province needs to focus on solving in the upcoming time," he said.

According to Deputy Minister Le Quoc Doanh, Hoa Binh has suitable soil and climate conditions for growing citrus trees. Income from citrus trees orchards is still high, but there have been signs of decline in the past few years. Suppose people have an income of VND 300-350 million per hectare. A part of this income must be spent to restore the soil because the soil is a decisive factor for plant health.

Some orange and pomelo orchards in Hoa Binh province are currently infected with diseases such as yellowing the leaves, green veins, yellowing the leaves to root rot, etc. Therefore, in addition to urgent and timely handling measures, Deputy Minister Le Quoc Doanh advised farmers to focus on two issues.

The first is the variety. It is necessary to choose and plant quality, disease-free varieties. The second is to improve soil health by increasing the use of organic fertilizers, using natural bait traps, actively pruning branches, creating a canopy, ensuring trees have enough space to grow.

"Wrong rice varieties, it only takes three months to recover, but if we cultivate the wrong varieties of oranges and pomelos, people can waste decades," said Deputy Minister Le Quoc Doanh.

In addition to consulting on technical measures, Deputy Minister Le Quoc Doanh also recommended Hoa Binh to promote the issuance of planting area codes, ensuring traceability towards export. He also said that at present, digital transformation and digital technology have crept into every corner of life. Therefore, Hoa Binh also needs to study the integration of multi-value into agricultural products, helping to increase surplus value sustainably.

The Hoa Binh Department of Agriculture and Rural Development shows that citrus trees in Hoa Binh have grown rapidly in the past ten years. In 2010, the area of ​​fruit trees in the whole province was more than 1,000 hectares, with an output of 19,000 tonnes. By 2021, it will be 10,840 hectares, with an output of 155,000 tonnes, of which nearly 8,000 hectares are for business.

The province has many distinct specialized production areas such as Orange and tangerine areas, concentrated in Cao Phong, Lac Thuy, and Kim Boi districts. Grapefruit areas are mainly in Tan Lac, Yen Thuy, and Luong Son districts. The set of citrus tree varieties is rich and diverse, meeting the needs of spreading the crop from September to April next year.

Citrus trees in Hoa Binh once peaked in the 2015-2016 period, after some products in the area were granted geographical indications. At that time, if retail, Cao Phong oranges have the price of VND 100,000 per kilogram.

However, in the last three years, some problems such as oversupply, falling prices, and epidemics have caused Hoa Binh to approve the Project on Replanting citrus fruit trees for the 2021-2025 period (On 16 September 2021). Some of the main contents of the project are: 100% of the cultivated area is grown using disease-free seed sources, applying technical packages to improve soil structure, and being provided with active irrigation water.

Simultaneously, Hoa Binh province plans that each commune or village have only 1-2 key varieties to form pure planting areas, meeting the area requirements for granting planting area codes (minimum 10 hectares per code).

Receiving suggestions from Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Le Quoc Doanh, Vice Chairman of Hoa Binh People's Committee, Mr. Dinh Cong Su committed to improving the efficiency of production organization of citrus fruit trees businesses and cooperatives.

He also proposed that the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development assign tasks to units under the Ministry and research institutes to support the provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development in granting planting area codes, packing facility codes, and connecting consumption markets.