Raphael John-Lall

Al­though there were chal­lenges in de­vel­op­ing the man­go in­dus­try and by ex­ten­sion food pro­duc­tion, T&T has the po­ten­tial to de­vel­op it in­to a vi­able in­dus­try said Dr Mario For­tune, chief tech­ni­cal of­fi­cer, Min­istry of Food Pro­duc­tion.

"The man­go in­dus­try, like oth­er food mar­kets in T&T, suf­fers from two main prob­lems. There is an in­con­sis­tent sup­ply and in­con­sis­tent qual­i­ty. Why do we re­ly so heav­i­ly on im­port­ed food? One is­sue is that you can get im­port­ed fruits in any quan­ti­ty you need all year round and you are as­sured of a cer­tain qual­i­ty. We recog­nised that some ac­tion must be tak­en to bring our lo­cal fruit in­dus­try, in­clud­ing man­go, to a sim­i­lar lev­el," he said.

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For­tune was speak­ing at the open­ing of the T&T Man­go Fes­ti­val at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Field Sta­tion, Mount Hope.He read a speech on be­half of Jairam Seemu­n­gal, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of State in the Min­istry of Food Pro­duc­tion, who was un­able to at­tend.To in­crease fruit pro­duc­tion, For­tune said, the Min­istry of Food Pro­duc­tion will en­sure that 202 hectares of man­go are cul­ti­vat­ed by 2015.

"This should re­sult in a sub­stan­tial in­crease in pro­duc­tion and is a ma­jor pil­lar in our thrust of pro­duc­ing more food," he said.Apart from in­creas­ing pro­duc­tion, the Min­istry is al­so look­ing for off-sea­son sup­plies to en­sure that mar­kets are sat­is­fied.

"We have al­ready be­gun the search for off-sea­son and reg­u­lar bear­ing va­ri­eties. Some of these have al­ready been iden­ti­fied and tri­als will be un­der­tak­en to as­sess their adapt­abil­i­ty un­der our con­di­tions and al­so, most im­por­tant­ly, con­sumer ac­cep­tance. It makes lit­tle sense in­tro­duc­ing new va­ri­eties on­ly to dis­cov­er that the con­sumer does not like them," he said.

For­tune said the Min­istry is al­so fo­cus­ing on re­search and de­vel­op­ment.Prod­uct de­vel­op­ment in terms of agro-pro­cess­ing, through val­ue ad­di­tion and pro­mo­tion of new prod­ucts, the en­hance­ment of back­ward and for­ward link­ages, im­prove­ment in post-har­vest han­dling, and stor­age are all ar­eas that we must tar­get in or­der to en­sure the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the man­go in­dus­try. In­creas­ing pro­duc­tion and se­lect­ing va­ri­eties for year round sup­ply, there­fore would go a long way to al­le­vi­ate the prob­lem of in­con­sis­tent sup­ply," he said.

Gregg Rawl­ins of the In­ter-Amer­i­can In­sti­tute for Co­op­er­a­tion on Agri­cul­ture (IICA) said man­go is al­so be­ing com­mer­cialised in oth­er parts of the world."T&T has a po­ten­tial to ful­ly de­vel­op this in­dus­try to one that cre­ates high qual­i­ty prod­ucts that can meet not on­ly the do­mes­tic mar­ket re­quire­ment but al­so re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets. T&T does have the pro­duc­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ty," he said.