By RFIPosted on 23-11-2019Modified on 23-11-2019 at 10:34

The second litchi-loaded container carrier is due to leave Tamatave harbor for Europe on Saturday, 23 November. After the poor quality of the harvest last year, the industry has followed stricter rules to have better fruits but fewer.

Not sweet enough, too small, withered ... The lychee of 2018 had had a hard time flowing into the stalls of European vegetables. To avoid losing their rank as the leading suppliers of the European Union, the Malagasy actors of the lychee industry have decided to impose themselves to a few stricter rules, to " regain confidence on the markets " concedes an exporter of Tamatave. " We lowered volumes to improve quality ; we have also increased our selection standards , "he continues. And, indeed, the volume fell because the two container ships leaving Tamatave took a total volume of 15,000 tons against 16,000 the previous year.

" Much better quality "

Producers, collectors and exporters confirm this: the quality of this year's litchi is much higher than last year. The rainfall that helped, the litchis that were picked from November 17, the official date of the harvest campaign, are " of a quality much higher than last year ," says an agronomist Horticultural Technical Center of Tamatave.

For its part, the Ministry of Agriculture, through the Casef, the project of Agricultural Growth and Land Tenure, has got its hands dirty. Soy Sesy, the national project coordinator, explains how the industry has changed its practices.

" To improve the sector, farmers were taught 4 to 5 months before fruit ripening, how to treat trees, how to prune them, when to do it. How to respond to climatic hazards, such as the absence of rain at a crucial moment of fruit development (with drip for example). We teach producers to adopt techniques that meet the criteria of the industry. "

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For Mr. Sesy, good practices have been lost in recent decades: " It's not that they do not know how to prune trees, it's more than they do not know which branch to cut and when. It's a lot of work relearning the basics because it's been decades now that they have abandoned more suitable techniques in terms of production or post-harvest. "

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