THE country is unlikely to achieve a competitive cost of production and fruit yield as it lacks certified nurseries for fruit saplings. Such places help provide good quality true-to-type trees for healthy orchards, leading to better output.

According to the Pakistan Horticulture Development and Export Company, the horticulture sector contributes about 12 per cent to the national agriculture GDP, but its volume of exports remains relatively low.

Multiple factors mar export potential. These include lack of international certification, grading, labelling, value-addition, packaging, market access, and huge pre- and post-harvest losses that run between 20-40 per cent. Want of appropriate farm-to-market roads, shortage of skilled labour and absence of institutional credit further worsen the situation.

The horticulture sector contributes about 12 per cent to the national agriculture GDP, but its volume of exports remains relatively low

Due to these issues the local per hectare output in citrus is around 11 tonnes against the world per hectare average of 35 to 40 tonnes. Ironically, local production is almost half of what is being harvested in neighbouring India, which has similar soil and weather conditions.

Experts caution that despite resolving the above-mentioned issues the country cannot conquer international markets for its fruit exports until it doesn’t catch up with the world average yield. This will make local agriculture products competitive. They say a farmer will benefit from their orchards only when they are able to export at least 50pc of their production.

An official of the Horticulture Research Institute, Faisalabad, counts the unavailability of true-to-type plants and low-grade nursery plants as the primary reason behind poor fruit yields.

The official who wishes not to be named, also refers to the use of low organic matter, saline soils, uncertain weather, unfit tube well water, faulty intercropping and inadequate and unbalanced fertiliser application, as other negative factors.

Endorsing this view, Director (technical, fruit and vegetable development) at Punjab Agriculture Department, Sajid Ahmad, says “Our fruit growers don’t get true-to-type trees or say the saplings provided by the nurseries are not genetically pure and thus lack the ability to achieve their optimal production level to the disadvantage of the farmer. That’s the major issue behind our low fruit yields. This leads to a higher cost of production that makes exports uncompetitive in world markets.”

The reason behind this genetic impurity is a lack of certified nurseries with decent capacity. “There are only a few nurseries in the country that supply fruit saplings and, unfortunately, it is rare for them to have developed technical, scientific and financial capacity needed to maintain health and purity of the germ-plasm,” he says.

The situation will continue to worsen as at least 10,000 acres per annum are being added to citrus orchards while old trees are also being uprooted to plant new ones in the hope of reaping a better return from new plantations.

Sharing his experience about the capacity and standards of nurseries internationally, Mr Ahmad says that there are nurseries in Australia each one of which may provide two million healthy, certified saplings per year to farmers with not a single complaint about genetic impurity or disease.

Meanwhile, minimum Fruit Plant Certification Standards for citrus, mango and guava have been drafted and are awaiting approval from the National Seed Council, while the standards for grapes, olive and palm are still being drafted. Arrangements to carry out sampling and virus indexing of the fruit plant germ-plasm units (GPUs) are also in the pipeline.

Some public sector institutions are making an effort to meet the need for certified rootstock and budding. The Pakistan Agriculture Research Council recently announced the provision of 20,000 certified hybrid fruit plants to promote orchard farming in different ecologies of the country.

Plant nurseries have been developed at the National Tea and High Value Crop Research Institution (NTHRI), Mansehra, where 60 types of fruit plants, including apple, peach, apricot, cherry, almond, fig, pomegranate and walnut have been developed.

But these efforts are inadequate keeping in mind the volume required for export and the fact that the government cannot do business as efficiently as the private sector can, says the agriculture official.

Mr Ahmad says that plant spacing is another issue because of deficient labour technologies and machinery. The world has successfully experimented with high density cropping by growing citrus and mango trees at close distances. The result is that the lower branches of the trees become deadwood and bear less fruit under the shade of the upper branches.

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, April 29th, 2019