Pakistan’s mango industry is producing better fruit and accessing more markets thanks to years of help from Australian researchers.
Since 2006, the Australian government, through the Australian Centre for International Agriculture Research (ACIAR) and AusAID, has been helping mango growers in Pakistan produce better mangoes, increase yields, fight disease and find alternative markets, Australia’s ABC Radio said on Wednesday.
Pakistan has over 3,00,000 mango growers and last year she sent trial export shipments to China and Europe.
Project Coordinator Lex Baxter says it is not “detrimental” to Australia’s mango industry to helping Pakistan which is the world’s fifth largest mango producer and there will be a lot of spin-offs for Australia’s industry.
“There are some really nasty pests and diseases (in Pakistan) and our researchers are getting experience with those, they can now identify them, they know how to work with them and have control strategies worked out, which is good,” he said.
Baxter said: “There’s also research happening in areas that wouldn’t have happened if we’d relied on levy payers’ money, so we’re doing some additional research in areas like flower manipulation.”
He said there were also markets opportunities which Australia had been thinking about, and Australian scientists, in conjunction with Pakistani scientists, has been looking at those markets, so when we do look at those markets seriously we’ve got a good background to work from.”
Ian Baker from the Northern Territory Farmers’ Association has also been in Pakistan helping mango producers establish their own growers association.
“The idea is when the AusAID project finishes, there’ll be a group of people there who can stand up for Pakistan mangoes and make sure the government continues to support the initiatives that AusAID started.”
“It helps our scientists get exposed to new situations, new ways of thinking, learning new ways of doing things and that’s what R&D is all about.”
