A substantial quantity of the mandarin fruit from orchards in Dagana dzongkhag never reaches the market for export to Bangladesh and India.

While exporters readily take the large size fruits, the small size fruits, which account for almost 40 percent of the dzongkhag's total yield, end up as 'export rejects', according to orchard owners. Some quantity of the export rejects is sold in the local market or domestically consumed but a significant portion is left on the trees to fall off by itself.


The plant employs about a score of local residents

From this season, however, growers in Dagana have begun plucking the small sized fruits as well to sell it to an integrated semi processing plant at Dagapela, 44 kilometres from the dzongkhag headquarters in Dagana. The plant was set up last year by the agriculture ministry's National Post Harvest Center.

“Now we can sell off what we used to dispose,” said Ugyen Tshewang of Dagapela.

The 'factory,' as the locals call the plant, buys the fruit at Nu. 2.5 a kilogramme. The citrus is peeled and pulp extracted and stored in large jars for sale to the Bhutan Agro Industries Limited in Wangchutaba, Thimphu. Bhutan Agro processes the pulp for the production of orange squash.

The plant, which is manned by two people, employs between 10 to 20 local residents to peel the fruit.

The daily workers include students on winter vacation. Choni Dema, a student of Drujaygang Middle Secondary School, is awaiting her Class X results. She peels out about four trays of oranges daily earning Nu. 20 for each tray. Tshering Pem, a Class IX schoolmate of Choni Dema said that the plant provided temporary jobs, which was not there before.

The plant began making mandarin pulp from December 5 last year. In the first month upto January 5, the plant sold 12 metric tonnes of pulp to Bhutan Agro at the rate of Nu 10 a kilogramme.

Dagana's annual produce

According to records maintained by the agriculture sector of the dzongkhag administration, the dzongkhag has 93,518 fruit bearing trees of local variety with an average production of 3,488 metric tonnes a season. Dagapela dungkhag consists of the gewogs of Dorona, Gesarling, Goshi, Tsendegang and Trashiding all of which grow mandarin.

Drujeygang gewog with 12,872 trees has the highest yield of mandarin in the dzongkhag with a production of close to 850 metric tonnes a season. The plant had used about 24 metric tonnes of fruit during the period. “Two kilogrammes of fruit yield about a kilogramme of pulp,” said the assistant manager of the plant, Tenzin Rabgyel.

Today, the plant is managed by a group of seven local residents. The group, called the Daga Shinde Tshogpa, functions with a chairman, a secretary, a treasurer, a labour controller, a quality controller and two raw material collectors. All the earnings from the sale of the pulp is remitted to a bank account of the tshogpa, which is to be ploughed back to upgrade the plant, according to Tenzin Rabgyel.

Tenzin Rabgyel said that the agriculture ministry would slowly let interested local residents run the plant after establishing the viability of the plant. “At the moment whole project is on a trial run,” he added. The plant has also started the trial production of many kinds of fruit and vegetable based chips, juice drinks and candys.

Since the plant was established in August last year, Tenzin Rabgyel and his manager D R Ghalley have tried producing about ten different products. “The products have not yet been released to the market because it needs to be checked for shelf life and meet other quality standards,” said Tenzin Rabgyel.

The two plant managers manually prepared guava juice, mixed pickle, ginger tea, pear syrup, fruit jam, miso paste and tomato juice, among others. All the fruit and vegetables were bought from the locality.

Tenzin Rangyel is optimistic that the products will sell well both in the domestic and external market because the products are organic. If it goes as hoped the idea is to establish a home level processing system. “We want to encourage the locals to produce all the products manually in future,” Tenzin Rabgyel told Kuensel.

He added that the plant in Dagapela was the first of its kind in the country and another plant would be established in Zhemgang soon.

Source