According to Noris Ledesma, the curator of the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Miami, Peru is well known for the quality of its mangoes, which are mainly of the Kent variety; a variety that has a very good quality and a high demand in the market.
However, despite the excellent quality of the Kent mango, Ledesma said, Peru needs to diversify its mango export offer.
The problem with the Kent variety, she said, is related to the changes in climate over the past 20 years as a result of global warming. The Kent variety is difficult to tame if it does not have weeks of cold, she added, and no one can control this factor.
"Peru can’t bet it all on the Kent variety, which has management problems. It’s increasingly more expensive to produce this variety because global warming directly affects the Kent variety, which is a subtropical variety. If there are no cold weeks in the year it does not bloom, that forces producers to diversify varieties," she said.
In that sense, he said, some tropical mango varieties that could be alternatives for the producers of the Peruvian coast are the Rapoza and Manzanillo varieties, which look like the Kent variety because of their fiber and good color, but have a redder skin, which is another drawback of the Kent variety, as it needs more resources in pruning and management plans to obtain fruits of better color to achieve better prices.
Peru should also aim at producing organic mangoes, as the organic market is booming and it’s expected to continue growing in the world because consumers wants to eat healthy food.
"I think there must be an organization that helps farmers so that they can receive the right price for their product. It’s inconceivable that organic and conventional mango have the same price when the first is more expensive to produce," he said.
"In general market terms, diversifying is healthy and smart. You can not put all your eggs in one basket, there are other alternatives that already exist, some companies even have germplasm banks and have advanced a lot in their task of finding a replacement to the Kent variety," he stated.
Source: agraria.pe